


The Arrangement, or Asking Yourself "Is It Really Bestiality?"

by NancyHartigan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Extremely Dubious Consent, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Werewolf Biology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:14:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22654567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NancyHartigan/pseuds/NancyHartigan
Summary: 1975-1978. Remus started acting REALLY off their third year, and when this came to a head in their fourth, Sirius took it upon himself to figure out what was going on. When he figures it out, well, Sirius figured that he shouldn't be surprised, but experience says you should never trust Sirius when he decides to put his mind into becoming an expert on such a narrow topic. It never ends well.Thankfully, Moony was always down for a good experiment. Maybe Sirius could learn a thing or two himself.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 10
Kudos: 63





	1. Attack

**Author's Note:**

> Alt title came from a great Cards Against Muggles combination and became a prompt. I'm not sorry.

Sirius couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t unusual, and it certainly wouldn’t have surprised anybody that he was still awake. His day had been shit, their dorm was supposed to be the safe space for the Marauders…well, there was the Shrieking Shack, too, but it was a bit late to wake James up and borrow the cloak and map just so he could get the fuck out of here for a while, but even with his curtains drawn, he could practically feel the seething rage that was Remus going to bed angry.

To be fair, Remus had been off his rocker for about a week by now, and if it was going to be as bad as he was around this time last year, Sirius just plain wasn’t going to have it this year, so of course he was going to nip this in the bud and for once, Remus was the _dramatic_ one. One low blow from Remus, then one from Sirius, and next thing Sirius had known, James was pulling Sirius back while Peter was in between them, pushing Remus to the opposite end of the room until Peter could push him through the bathroom door and told him to take a shower to cool off.

Fuck this. Sirius got enough of this bullshit at home, and nobody knew this better than the other Marauders. If Remus was going to be this way every time it started to get warm outside, Sirius just was going to avoid talking to him until then.

“ _Silencio_.”

Sirius froze a little at the voice, which was definitely Remus, definitely irritated, and definitely restless. Okay, yeah, there was something up and Sirius was going to tell him off for it.

Before he could finish getting up, the curtains got yanked open, and Sirius didn’t like where this was going because he could make out that Moony wasn’t looking right. He was not like this a few hours ago, he could damn well tell you that, but it was far too dark for him to put his finger on it.

Remus was crawling over him, the curtains not completely drawn behind him, and Sirius naturally grabbed at his shoulders to push him back.

“Get it together Moony. What the hell’s been the matter with you?”

“What’s been the matter with _me_?” Remus replied, shrugging off the push like Sirius had merely patted his shoulder. “You’re the one who keeps trying to undermine me at every turn, we almost got caught down in the dungeons yesterday because _you_ can’t just listen to a plan and execute it right, and _you’re_ going to try to tell me _I’m_ the one with a problem?”

“You can’t hold that against me!” Sirius told him. “If we went with the plan directly as we planned it Slughorn was going to catch us, _somebody_ had to head him off at the pass!”

“Don’t pull that with me, Sirius, I know you saw Greengrass and wanted to head _her_ off at the pass and you weren’t exactly thinking about not getting caught up.” Remus pushed him back, and to Sirius’ terror, he realized that Remus was _much_ stronger than usual. “You’re just as bad as James, it’s mystifying how alike you are!”

“Well, James _is_ my cousin, Moony, of _course_ we’re going to be a little bit alike!” Sirius pointed out, using a bit more of his strength to try to push his friend away from him and still failing miserably.

Remus grabbed his wrists and pinned them to the sides of his head, having moved his body to straddle his waist, well out of the range that Sirius needed him to be at if he wanted knee him and Sirius was sure that he heard a feral snarl coming from above him.

“ _Don’t fucking touch me Sirius_ , I’m trying to talk this out with you!”

“You’re not doing much talking,” Sirius shouted back. “You came in here and started yelling, it’s a fucking miracle that Prongs and Wormtail have…” Sirius trailed off, and he could practically feel the werewolf’s eyebrows raise.

“Take your time, Padfoot, I know it’s hard for you to use your critical thinking skills some days.”

“You used a charm then,” Sirius accused him.

The hands on his wrists started to slide down his elbows, nails sharper than Sirius could remember them looking, feeling the first few layers of his skin give way to them. “You’ll learn it next year; it shouldn’t be too hard.”

Sirius grit his teeth a little, balling his fists, because goddammit, he wasn’t sure if he could fight him off right now, and for some reason, the pain was just an initial thing, not at all as problematic as it should be, and while he was still trying to process this, he felt Remus’ hands on his sides and he suddenly felt the cold air of Hogwarts settle over his chest and stomach. It was enough to throw Sirius back into reality, away from the pain mixed with a little bit of pleasure.

“What the fuck are you doing, Remus?” Sirius shouted, moving to twist his hips to throw off his friend’s balance.

But he was starting to think Remus was hardly keeping his head above water, that something else was controlling his movements, because the next thing that Sirius could make out as a response was teeth on his neck, one hand in his hair to pull his head to the side.

Remus would never put his teeth on anybody this close to the full moon, even if they fucking deserved it. There was definitely something lying under his skin, because those teeth didn’t feel human at all, and they were threatening to rip Sirius’ throat out right on the spot while he felt those nails (claws?) drag down his chest, felt blood welling up in their wake.

How the hell did he get himself out of this one? Like some sort of pitiful prey, Sirius’ instincts were to freeze in his friend’s arms, barely risk breathing lest those teeth rip open their target. This was easier said than done as he felt Remus’s claws break the skin of his nipples, sensitive and already sore. He sucked his air in through his teeth, arching his back obscenely into Remus, and his suspicions were confirmed by a low growl coming from his neck.

Sirius may be fourteen, but he wasn’t exactly naïve. It didn’t matter how out of nowhere this attack was coming, because Sirius wasn’t at all sure that this was even his best friend he was dealing with. Remus would never dream of this sort of threat just to keep Sirius still underneath him while he felt him up and took his fill. Really, the only choice in this matter that Sirius was sure that he had was he could lie back and think of England or he could go down trying to fight him off.

Maybe there was an option in the middle, though. There was no reasoning with a wild animal, truly, but Remus had always been a creature of reason, if he could coax him back to the surface then maybe there was a chance that Sirius could make it out of this merely marred.

“Remus,” he breathed, trying not to freak out any more than he already was. “Remus, I know you can control it, you don’t want to do this.”

The teeth against the delicate skin of his neck released enough that Sirius was able to breathe safely, but the hand on his bare waist tightened almost to the point that Sirius was in pain. That was still a good sign, he could move his head and neck away from Remus’ second most dangerous weapon – his teeth were nowhere near as sharp as his mind, even if it was muddled by something so completely feral right now that Sirius could hardly tell the difference between the two – and focus on trying to bring Remus back.

“Just breathe, Remus, it’s not the full moon yet, you can control it, I know you can. I know you don’t want me to get hurt just because you’re mad.”

He felt Remus’ hot, shaking breath on his shoulder, and Sirius moved a hand to run up his neck and run roughly through thickened hair, trying to help his friend calm the fuck down.

“You’re going to be okay, mate, just breathe.”

He wished he could get into his mind for a minute, just to see if this was even working, who was winning out. Sirius got his answer as another shaky breath was taken – those teeth found the flesh between where the thin skin of his sternum met the muscle of his chest and held on to him there, hard enough that Sirius was sure there would be a mark there in the morning, but not hard enough to break the skin. He could practically feel his heart racing underneath the teeth, threatening to burst from his chest and let Remus eat it right here and now.

It took a lot of effort to stay still, not threaten or tempt Remus any further than he already had.

The hand in his hair dropped to Sirius’ hip, effectively pinning him down and holding him still when working in combination with the hand digging into his waist. This was definitely getting into a weirder territory, one that Sirius had definitely not even considered before, but at least he was pretty sure that that the beast was not looking to turn him into Remus’ midnight snack.

Other things, maybe, but Remus was not the type of guy that would ever try something like that even if he got some cute, tight-bodied honey cornered some place where he didn’t have to worry about being caught. Maybe he just had to keep still until the beast lost interest. If Remus was just feeling some type of way over Sirius getting confrontational, maybe all it was going to take was _not_ being confrontational. It made sense in Sirius’ head, he guessed, werewolves probably had that pack mentality and Remus just wanted to be the one in charge right now.

But damn if it wasn’t hard not to squirm as Remus found his collarbone and bit into that as well. He could figure out what the hell was making his own body respond to Remus the way he was doing sometime later. Remus felt like he knew exactly what he was doing to get Sirius worked up, or whichever part of him was in control.

At least Remus was in enough control that Sirius wasn’t dead yet. That was at least a little promising, if Sirius could catch his breath enough to try to keep talking Remus to the surface.

When the wolf seemed satisfied that Sirius wasn’t going to fight him back, Remus lifted his head, making another playful bite at Sirius’ neck and slipped up a little, Sirius _well_ aware of what exactly was under the flannel pajamas that his friend was sporting, and he was sure that Remus was watching him try to recover.

Remus shifted and Sirius felt his legs spread apart a little, hands moving from his waist and hips to the insides of his thighs, and by time his mind caught up, Sirius was already obeying, already feeling a hand run along the inseam of his boxers and then feeling his half-hard cock practically jump into one of Remus’ hands almost the minute the werewolf could grab it.

This time, Sirius _did_ arch his back off his bed with a gasp, but he recovered well enough to end that arch with pulling himself into a sitting position to try to push Remus off again. Hadn’t Remus ever heard of personal space? For someone who wasn’t that fond of being touched, Remus was certainly taking his sweet time exploring his body.

Remus thankfully removed his hand, but it was just to pull Sirius by his legs back on to his back and suddenly, Sirius breath was caught in his throat, cut off by what could only be his own shirt, a growl cutting off anything that Sirius might have tried saying over the ligature.

“I don’t got anything you don’t, Remus, if you’re looking to get off your bed’s over there,” Sirius told him with what breath he could get out.

This was getting out of hand. That ship probably already sailed, but you know, it was hard to appreciate the Big Bad Wolf for what it was when it was wearing the face of a very dear friend, speaking in _his_ voice to you, abusing _his_ talents to get at you and make it so you couldn’t scream for help.

Fuck it. Sirius squirmed underneath him until his shirt was no longer pressing on the Adam’s apple developing in his throat.

“If you’re going to kill me just do it, but Remus, you’ll hate yourself in the morning for it and you know it, and you’re not gonna fuck me like this.”

He’d be lying if he said he never thought about Remus that way, the only people that probably haven’t were probably female-exclusive or too shallow to see behind the scars. That didn’t change a damn thing, how do even go about trying to figure out who was going to be raping who in this sort of situation? Remus was in no more control of his actions than Sirius was capable of fighting him off, the only thing that could come out of Remus continuing was…well…a lot of hurt feelings and isolation. Sirius liked to live in the moment and all, but Remus had a lot to lose in the future if he didn’t get himself together.

Remus readjusted his grip on his shirt and slammed it back down again, and Sirius didn’t need to see his fucking face to know how blank it was. Sirius didn’t fight him, knowing he had made the offer, knowing that he needed to keep some shred of his pride and see this through to the end.

The lack of oxygen mixed with Remus’ teeth and tongue exploring his chest was such a perfect mix of pain and pleasure, and Sirius was starting to get concerned that this was a sign he was a complete and utter masochist. What other option was there when it came to getting off on one of your best friends absolutely manhandling you, too far gone to even think about what he was doing?

Just as quickly as it happened, Sirius felt the slack on his shirt, then teeth on his neck again, and he was beyond fighting at this point. It was rather clear that the wolf that Remus usually had so much control over had won out, had no intention of killing him so long as he obeyed, so Sirius tilted his head back like the bitch that the wolf so clearly wanted him to be and tried to lay completely still. Above him, he heard a growl of approval, and Remus hands became a lot gentler with him, for what it was worth. He felt him scratching his way down, felt the elastic of his waistband give way with a snap that made him flinch.

“Moony, I said no,” Sirius reminded, hoping to get through to him. Remus clearly had to be somewhere lurking underneath the surface; he hadn’t fully transformed, after all, he was just somewhere in limbo, claws sharp and teeth ready to tear at his neck any second, but he was still feeling skin against his own, and there was something hopeful there.

Thankfully, Remus seemed to win the fight for now, because he felt hands move from his body and felt his teeth move, though Sirius very quickly found himself pinned. His hot breath was still by his ear, coming out in pants, muffled by his pillow, and Sirius swore he heard wooden splintering behind his head, but all he could think of was to wrap his arms around Remus’ lanky frame and hold on tight while he went through one of the few battles that Sirius knew he couldn’t ever help him fight.

“You’re you, Remus,” Sirius told him. “Strongest bastard I know, you can get through this, just fight it down, the full moon isn’t here yet.”

When Remus’ breathing evened out, Sirius let go in relief, even if he was now in no mood for sleep. It wasn’t too long before he felt the tension leave Remus’ body, and he came to accept that he was stuck underneath a sleeping werewolf.

Resigned, Sirius dropped his head to his pillow, defeated.

“You’re going to be the death of me, Moony.”

He didn’t expect an answer, of course, and he certainly didn’t get one.

\---

Sirius woke up far too early for his liking, feeling like he hadn’t slept a wink, and it took him a moment to realize he was getting shaken awake and Remus was whisper-shouting his damn name like a record needle catching a scratch.

“What?” Sirius mumbled.

“Are you okay?”

“For god’s sake Moony, can’t we talk about this after the sun rises at least?”

“No,” Remus insisted. “No, we can’t, look at yourself!”

Sirius mumbled and dramatically pulled his curtains open to search for himself in James’ mirror. Well, okay, so Sirius might look a bit like death today. His hair was a mess, there was a thick red line across his neck, scratches down his chest and arms, bruises that he was sure were blossoming with purples and reds by now.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sirius told him, closing his curtain and laid back down.

“I’m sorry,” Remus told him after throwing his arms around Sirius. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“I told you not to worry about it, nothing happened.”

“Clearly _something_ happened!” Remus protested. “This doesn’t look a thing like nothing!”

“Relax, I’ll do some research, there’s gotta be some explanation, right?” Sirius told him. “Just tell everyone I’m not feeling well and I’ll sneak down to the library and look into it.”

“I’m not feeling well either,” Remus reminded. “Tonight’s the night, remember?”

“…” Sirius sighed. “I hope you don’t mean I’m SOL on getting a head start on that.”

“I don’t suppose I could ask you to forget what happened that easily, can I?”

“Not a chance, Moony, it’s not like you to go out of control the night before.”

“…I’m so sorry,” Remus repeated. “I…think I’m going to head to the Shack early today. Might be best if you don’t come tonight.”

“Will keep that in mind but keep in mind that I never do what’s best for me,” Sirius told him. “Are you feeling better at least?”

Remus looked him like he sprouted a second head, or perhaps admitted he loved his mother. “…not really. Kind of worse actually.”

Sirius rolled his eyes, moving to get out of bed and tried to maintain some amount of decency as he threw his uniform on to begin his walk of shame to try to see if Lily would let him borrow her makeup.


	2. Uncomfortable Truths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius begins his research and is bothered by what he hears, and this time, he can't even blame it on his choice in a study buddy.

Regulus had already parked himself at one of the tables in the library with a stack of books that came up to his shoulder when Sirius walked himself down to the library. For the most part, Sirius would barely acknowledge his little brother existed while they were trying to not destroy their chances at glory via House Cup, but on occasion, Sirius would end up sitting on the opposite end of his table when they were both in research mode. What could he say? Sirius was nothing if not merciful, and Regulus liked to bury himself in his work with very little distraction.

Today seemed to be one of those days, because Sirius poured out a few of the more advanced texts covering werewolves (just about anything he could find, honestly, because where exactly did you start on this sort of research?) and with all the dramatic flair of a Black, collapsed himself into the chair on the opposite side of Regulus.

His perfect little brother glanced up with his eyebrow raised but didn’t talk to him at all. Sirius shot him a mischievous toothy grin and a wink, a quiet promise that he solemnly swore he was up to no good. Regulus rolled his eyes, then fixed them back to the page he had his nose stuck in, quill in hand as he copied the page word for word in perfect scroll so that he could take the pages back on his own.

“…Do you have detention or something?” Sirius asked him.

“No? Hawthorne just needed some additional information about Nifflers, Grouse is struggling with a basic conjuration, and Trebuchet cannot for the life of him figure out how to treat a burn from salamander blood.” Regulus gestured to his pile. “And this is my free period.”

“Can I borrow that copy of _Fantastic Beasts_ when you’re done then?” Sirius asked. “I really fell behind with Defense and I got told I can get extra credit for a comprehensive werewolf report.”

“Just finished with it,” Regulus told him, sliding it over. “Mother is going to have your head, you know. Probably could mount it beside Gaddy’s on Kreacher’s plaque.”

“Not if she doesn’t find out,” Sirius told him pointedly. “It’s not completely hopeless if I catch up sooner rather than later.”

Regulus rolled his eyes, then got his wand out leaning toward Sirius, who lifted his eyebrow.

“ _Episkey_.”

Sirius lifted the second dark eyebrow, but felt a bit of relief from the soreness on his neck and chest before Regulus flipped his page, wand resting innocently by his ink pot.

“What was that for?”

“I’m not letting you embarrass me by walking around with a hickey poking out of your collar. Bruises show up best are under darker lighting.”

“Mind telling me how you know that?”

“I live in a dungeon,” Regulus pointed out. “How do you _think_ I know? And pull your hair back, you look like a tramp.”

After sending a glare Regulus’ way and realizing that Regulus has never feared a Marauder’s wrath for a second, he made a soft, annoyed noise and pulled his hair back, using his wand to pin it in place. He gave Regulus a look that threatened him to say one more criticism about his appearance, but Regulus looked down at his book and kept taking his notes.

Just as bad as Moony, Sirius surmised, but at least Moony had redeeming qualities. At least Regulus knew how to not overstay his welcome, and the two fell into comfortable silence as they fell into their books. At some point, he saw Regulus get up and felt him squeeze his shoulder in a silent goodbye to head off to his own classes, but Sirius decided to stay for a while longer.

All the basic information was pretty much universal in the passages: A werewolf could not even recognize his best friend on the night of a full moon, he was violent and would kill on sight, how to identify one, how to treat a wound inflicted by one, but there was no cure for lycanthropy, which will almost always be transferred with a bite (assuming that you survived the attack in the first place) but there are some reports of it being transferred via scratching.

Sirius was almost concerned for a second, but he concluded that his skin hadn’t broke when Remus bit him last night, and odds were that Remus kept himself clean enough that Sirius had nothing to worry about with his scratches. They weren’t burning, after all, so that was a good sign. He could only imagine that if he was infected, he would be _feeling_ like the wounds had gotten infected, so that was good news he could pass on later tonight.

Werewolves in their changed form had several differences from wolves themselves, but essentially, the differences were so minuscule that under the light of a full moon, the two are easily mistaken for each other if you don’t know how to spot the difference, which has left many a traveler to leave their wounds untreated, leading to several rural towns being created and ending the times of witches and wizards who lived in complete isolation in forests somewhere around the 1400s.

Sirius checked the title of what he was reading, because he was pretty sure he didn’t pick up any books about history and if he wanted such a dry lecture about why several wizarding villages have come about, he could have simply asked Professor Binns and gotten a nap out of it.

None of this had anything to do with Remus, and he was kind of starting to get irritated by these books’ portrayals of werewolves in general because it was as if they never bothered asking a single werewolf for any information that they might have on the affliction. It was as if this was completely under researched, even for someone as passionate about magical creatures as Newt Scamander. Not a single one of these passages even mentioned how a werewolf would spend a good amount of time whimpering and incapacitated from their own pain when the transformation finished, nor did they seem to even care that when morning light hits them and their mind returns to their normal state, they will be helpless, weak, and drained. Not a single source mentions them remembering what they’ve done in their maddened states and how they can get physically sick from their bodies being wracked with worry over what they’ve done.

If it weren’t for the fact that he was sure that Remus would flay him for it, Sirius would be seriously considering writing his own book to try to counter this whole “werewolves are mindless monsters” agenda he’s seeing all over the place. Maybe that would make someone at least consider giving these people some sort of relief come the full moon that didn’t come in the form of silver bullets.

If somebody ever considered for a second putting a silver bullet into Remus, Sirius wouldn’t think twice about the matter; that person would very quickly realize that the real monsters in the Marauders were the humans. Sirius knew that James and Peter would not hold him back for even a second. James, at least, was liable to even jump in and help him out.

Sirius turned his head to look through the window, realizing he had gone through most of his day and was nowhere near an answer to help Remus feel a little better about what happened last night. With a quiet swear to himself, he picked up the books that he hadn’t already cracked open to look for an answer and headed to Madam Pince to check them out, muttering about what a waste of time extra credit could wind up being.

He got no sympathy, of course.

\---

The trap door opened in the Shrieking Shack as the sky exploded in vivid reds and golds, a blessing for Gryffindor House if Sirius had ever seen one, and he dropped the books on to the ancient nightstand with a stretch.

“I’m really not in the mood to read right now,” Remus told him from under the covers of the bed.

“Nah, they’re for me, Moony,” Sirius told him. “Where’s Pete and James?”

“Probably still getting dinner.” Remus pulled the duvet from over his head to look at Sirius. “Did you find anything?”

Sirius offered him a pathetic shrug in response. “Just that werewolves are a criminally under researched topic. Nothing you probably didn’t already know.”

“Well, yeah,” Remus told him. “Most people aren’t stupid enough to try to befriend one, you know.”

Sirius offered him a grin and plopped down on to the bed, pulling his hair out of the makeshift ponytail that Regulus made him pull, shaking it out. “But we’re _your_ stupid friends, you know!”

There was an audible sniff in the air, and Sirius blinked over at Remus, then laughed a little bit at the absurdity that was his friend during the full moon. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry,” Remus told him, pulling a face. “Whatever you used in your hair is just a little…powerful today.”

“It’s no different than what I typically use,” Sirius told him, thinking. “Well I did hear from Evans that lemon juice is good for your hair, so I did a rinse the other night, but nothing else changed really, besides, I thought you said citrus clears your nose.”

“I don’t think that’s it.” Remus crawled over, grabbing Sirius to keep him from pulling back and buried his nose against the top of his scalp.

Given how weird Remus had acted last night, Sirius found it hard to not try to push him off and tell Remus to stop being so physical about it, and he certainly found it difficult to not let Remus smell any trace of fear on him by freezing. Instead, he just took a fistful of covers on each side of his body and squeezed as hard as he could and clenched his eyes closed, trying to block out what was happening as Remus tried to pinpoint what was off.

There was a low growl against his ear, but Sirius stayed still, trying to mentally translate it. Thankfully, he was a canid himself, so the language wasn’t completely foreign to him – if Sirius had to describe what it was like to try to translate from wolf to dog to human, he’d have to say it was a bit like trying to discern what Remus was trying to say through his best attempt at the thickest Welsh accent he could muster (likely because he was Welsh himself, but that probably varied depending on where the wolf came from) – and it certainly wasn’t any sort of danger noise, so Sirius kept himself still.

Remus gently brushed the hair from his shoulders and with a lot less force than he used last night, Sirius was feeling his teeth sink into the side of his neck again. His heart jumped in his chest against Sirius’ will, and he exhaled slightly to keep his breath from hitching.

Sirius decided that now was probably a good idea to pull Remus back to the surface by gently repeating his name over and over until he removed his teeth. He could feel their bodies twisting in the process, and when Sirius opened his eyes, he was looking up at the faded canopy and Remus’ face, eyes flecked with gold among their usual hue.

Remus closed his eyes himself, shaking his head out of it, then they were back to brown as he pulled back and let Sirius sit up.

Sirius chose to lay down a while longer, back still aching from sitting around all day, but eventually he followed suit, sitting back up and trying to get a better look at Remus.

“…I’m sorry,” Remus told him for what felt like the millionth time today to Sirius.

Sirius held up his hand, because he didn’t want to hear it, Remus had nothing to apologize for. He had long concluded that Remus has zero control over his furry little problem, and this just felt like this whole ordeal was spilling over from it. “So, I smell good and that’s triggering some sort of weird instinct for you to try to bite me is what I’m getting from that.”

“Maybe you need to head back for the night,” Remus told him. “I have no idea what will happen if you stay here, even if you do transform too.”

“We’re not leaving you,” Sirius told him. “That’s just not in the cards, you can forget about that one.”

Remus didn’t say anything for a while, but he did have a smile on his face. He didn’t need to say anything. Sirius knew that Remus didn’t want anything to happen to them, but he certainly didn’t want to be alone either. Before today, he might have said that it was a simple as that, but after his trip to the library, Sirius wasn’t sure if it truly was as simple as that.

It was the product of nobody bothering to even once ask a werewolf what made them tick, it was centuries of trying to live in hiding and finally having a small group of friends who weren’t afraid of him for what he was capable of. Years of complete agony, at least 84 times without anybody at his side to tell him that he was still Remus underneath it all.

But he still was, Sirius knew that for sure, even if for some reason Remus’ base instincts seemed to be pointing toward making Sirius join him in that pain. After all, Remus has yet to break his skin, and Sirius viewed that as a testament to Moony’s sheer willpower.

“Did you remember to eat?” came a voice from under the floorboards, and it took Sirius a solid ten seconds to recognize it as James.

“Does it matter?” Sirius called back. “Moony’s always gonna be hungry this close to transformation!”

Peter popped up first. “Well then it’s a good thing we smuggled out some extra food!”

As James and Peter took their places on the bed, the jokes started getting cracked and Sirius and Remus decided to talk about anything but what was going on. James agonized ad nauseum over the fact that stealing Lily’s books and hiding them among the library books somehow didn’t work for catching her romantic attentions, Remus told him that he was an idiot for thinking that it was ever going to catch somebody’s affections in the first place. Peter told them about how a first year was claiming that there was an animate scarecrow that was wandering Hagrid’s garden at night and how he and his friends were going to try to sneak out tonight to try to catch it. Sirius lamented over how this was the perfect opportunity to mess around with them and enchant one, but they were going to miss out on it. James pointed out that there was an old legend about how scarecrows would come to life in the fields and act as their indiscriminate guardians, and Sirius pointed out that there was a comic book that featured a character who likely took inspiration from those legends, because he was forever feeding off the fear of the city.

Then he had to explain that it was actually just a researcher and not any sort of magical entity, which took the excitement out of James for this badass villain, because he thought it would be much more interesting if he was an actual guardian of the fields instead of a psychopath in a costume. Remus mused that he thought that it was part of the charm of the series that it was so hard to tell if something was supernatural, magic, or mundane until the main character could deduce which one, and together Sirius and he wondered if a scarecrow misplaced in a city wouldn’t be treading on the territory of the sexy ecoterrorist who was confused as to how plants’ lives were viewed as less important than human life, which caught James’ attention again, because he was always for beautiful women, even if they were psychotic. His love of her was completely sealed when they told him that it was a green-eyed redhead.

It was a nearly perfect distraction for Remus, Sirius was sure. He barely noticed that the reds and golds creeping through the windows have given in to the celestial blues and silvers of the night, and when they finally filled the room, Remus grit his teeth and the other three quickly transformed into their animal forms, ready to go.

Once the wolf managed to shake the pain out of his body, Sirius trotted over to him to playfully bow, tail wagging a mile a minute, and soon all four were bounding around the room, playing chase and trying to wear out the werewolf, who seemed much more interested in catching his canine companion. Thankfully, the rat and stag were very good at keeping them separated, and by time morning light finally hit them, Remus was so ready to sleep off the pain that Sirius and Prongs had to throw his robes on him and carry him out of there. Thankfully, Peter noticed Sirius’ library books and grabbed them on their way out with a grin and a feigned lecture about Sirius needing to take better care of his things.

It was the closest that thing have felt to normal since the weather started warming up again, and Sirius wondered if it was just going to be like this every year from now on around this time. He supposed that he needed to do a little more research to figure it out for himself. At least it was the weekend and he could get away with locking himself up in the dorm to try to figure out the answer under the guise of needing the extra credit.

James and Peter would be idiots if they didn’t realize what kind of bullshit excuse that this truly was, but hey. They were his idiots, so he guessed that he would allow this if it meant he got out of explaining that Remus was in a weird mood to try to transfer his ailment to Sirius and Sirius alone, for some reason that was related to how he was smelling.

Yeah, extra credit to try to make sure he passed felt far more believable than the truth. No wonder Remus was so good at lying by now.


	3. Lovefools

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Peter have some unfinished business from the day's shenanigans, leaving Sirius and Remus to have a moment to themselves after hours.

The Gryffindor Common Room was actually quite cozy after dark. After everybody had gone to bed, it was quickly becoming his favorite spot in the castle to just sit down and read. Remus seemed to think the same thing, because he was currently burying himself in some Orwell novel or another (which Remus insisted was _quite_ interesting and that Sirius would love it if he wanted to make a habit of them having late night reading sessions, but the jury was still out on if Sirius was ever going to read this much in a short session ever again) acting as Sirius’ footrest as he took up as much of the couch in front of the fire as humanly possible, yet another textbook resting on his thighs.

Admittedly, they were waiting for James and Peter to make their way back from the Ravenclaw Common Room with the intention of casting a confounding charm on the Head Boy after he had dared to inform James that his tactics for scaring Snape had a risk of driving Lily closer to Severus instead of getting the results that he desired, but it was the perfect time to make some headway into his own research.

Over the past week, Remus was slowly getting back to his normal self, even if he was still far more confrontational than he usually was, but at least Sirius could be safely left alone with him without Remus trying to bite him. Some semblance of normal was good, but Sirius was not one to begin something and leave it unfinished. If it happened once, there was a good chance that it would happen again, and Sirius was not going to trust Remus to have the willpower to beat out the beast every single time.

Besides, some of this stuff was actually interesting. For all of the lone wolf jokes that Sirius and James loved to make over the most quiet Marauder, it was quite an unusual sight to see a werewolf outside of their pack, which has very specific roles for each of its members and a well-organized pack of werewolves could probably take out a village as large as Hogsmeade before the end of the night if they were so inclined.

Sirius, naturally, asked Remus about his own pack and why they’ve never met any of the other members, and Remus rolled his eyes, made an exaggerated gesture, and mentioned that as far as he was concerned, the Marauders _were_ his pack. The person who passed lycanthropy on to him was barely remembered and he had not seen him before or since, after all, and he wasn’t sure that he was missing that much.

That had been far more information about Remus that Sirius had ever gotten, and to him, that was beyond interesting. Was he more willing to divulge this information because somebody was bothering to learn, or simply because somebody thought to ask?

He was careful to keep his own inquisitive nature under control, though, because he was sure that this was very likely to get annoying if he asked too many questions, so he had to let his own knowledge of how Remus operated to let himself come to his own conclusions. The theory that a werewolf could sniff out its own kind? It made perfect sense to Sirius, because he’s seen Remus become very reliant on his sense of smell during potions to make sure that the right ingredients were not overbrewing, not to mention the fact that something about the way he smelled had been driving Remus crazy during the last moon cycle.

Which was roughly where Sirius had taken his research for the last week. It was roughly the same time of year as third year that Remus had gotten more aggressive than usual, and it made perfect sense to him that this might be related to the all-powerful source that ruled over Moony’s entire life, for better or worse, and everything needed to be planned around its phases.

Sure, it answered nothing about why Sirius was not fighting back as much as he could when Remus had been getting so handsy-and-toothy, but one step at a time was what kept things moving forward. Remus seemed much more relaxed with more physical contact, anyway, which explained why Sirius was making sure that the backs of his ankles were pressed up against his thigh while they were waiting around for James to exact his revenge.

“Say, Moony.”

“Mm?”

“Do you ever sit back and think Prongs takes this whole Lily thing far too seriously to be _taken_ seriously? Know what I mean?”

“Of course I do,” Remus said with a half shrug, not looking up from his novel. “Why do you think I’ve been discouraging this kind of behavior for a year now?”

“I do want the best for him, of course,” Sirius told him.

“We all do,” Remus assured. “I’m just waiting for him to get it in his head that there may have been a point made today. Though I suppose that I can’t say I don’t understand.”

“You can’t?” Sirius said over his own book. “I think an elaboration is necessary, Moony, tell me how you can’t say you don’t understand?”

“I suppose when you think that you’re in love, logical decisions no longer apply,” Remus told him. “I mean, look at my parents. Dad certainly didn’t suffer any consequences by saving Mum despite using magic on that boggart right in front of her, but that could have easily been a sanction at the least. Prongs very likely thinks that if he can scare Snape away, that will be the edge he needs to win Evans over, which is very likely to fail, but we can’t ever say logic has ever applied to any of us in the first place.”

“I don’t know, you’re pretty logical when you want to be. Won’t be surprised if next year you’re going to be up for prefect. Of course, if you’re prefect, we can certainly use that to our advantage for sneaking out and about.”

“If you want to use the prefect bathroom, Sirius, you’re going to need to put your hat in the ring for the status yourself, it’s as simple as that.”

Sirius playfully kicked him. “You’re terrible, is it so bad to want one high quality bath while I’m here?”

“Maybe if you got a haircut you wouldn’t take so long, and I’d consider letting you.”

“You’re just jealous that yours only looks better than mine a few days out of the month.”

“I have _zero_ interest in trying to use like fifteen hair treatments every morning trying to compete.” Remus suddenly looked up from his book and turned his head. “What do you _mean_ a few times a month my hair is better than yours?”

“Have you never noticed your hair is actually thick enough to have some volume during the gibbous? If you bothered to do anything with it around that time you might have noticed sooner. It was one of the first things that tipped me off when you weren’t acting right last week that it’s got something to do with your furry little problem.”

“I’d ask you why you were touching my hair, but something tells me I don’t want to know about that,” Remus told him.

“Well I had to try to pull you off some way or another,” Sirius told him. “I still stand by the fact nothing happened, though, so don’t try to overanalyze it now that you’re feeling better.”

“I’m just going to catalogue that into more evidence that it wasn’t ‘nothing’ anyway.”

“Say what you want, Moony, only one of us had our wits about us that night.”

“…If I did hurt you in any sort of way, you’d let me know, right?”

Sirius glanced up from his book, a little surprised when he saw that Remus was not reading either.

“What kind of friend do you take me for? Of course I’d tell you if I got hurt. All you did was give me a good fright, you scarewolf. I was more worried you were going to go back to trying to handle everything on your own after that than anything else you might have tried to do.” Sirius smiled. “Besides, it’s really interesting to read up on the topic and try to figure out what is going on here. I guess most observation subjects aren’t your age though.”

“Of course not, most people hide they’re a werewolf for as long as possible.”

“Makes it hard to discern what’s going on, though. I mean, it could be that you’re feeling your place in the group is being threatened somehow, it could be something going on with how you’re reading certain smells, it could be some sort of growing pain, I mean you _are_ getting taller, I can’t imagine that’s very comfortable for your condition and I’d get a little cranky too…could be a mixture of all the above, it’s just strange nobody has done so much as a self-help book to try to talk younger werewolves through the process.”

“Well, most younger werewolves do have somebody to turn to so they can get explanations for their changes,” Remus told him. “I just so happen to not be one of them.”

Sirius shook his head. “Kind of bad for us that you aren’t, we’d not be sitting here trying to figure out something that probably every werewolf goes through and not just be left guessing.”

“I don’t regret it, you know. I can’t imagine where I’d be today if Mum and Dad moved and hadn’t taken me with them. Probably wouldn’t be here, for a start. Feels like a fair tradeoff if I’m honest.”

Sirius smiled at that, glad that Remus hadn’t been abandoned and left for the wolves, in possibly a far more literal sense than somebody would think. Remus, Peter, and James all made this whole Gryffindor thing so much more tolerable, and it was like some sort of elaborate tapestry – Sirius was sure that if so much as a single one of them would have not shown up, things would be far different in the worst way possible.

Whether it be the Big Bad Wolf, unrealistic expectations for yourself, a terrible home life, or the constant fear of failure, every one of them brought their demons to the table, and that’s exactly what Sirius loved about this group. He kicked his legs out to stretch his hamstrings, careful to keep the back of his thighs touching his so that Remus could stay in his current state.

“Glad you think so, Moony, because we’re happy to have you.”

Remus didn’t dignify that with a response, but he did smile slightly, turning his eyes back to his book. Sirius took a while to just admire how the fire reflected his profile. It was a shame that Remus didn’t quite see past his own insecurities to see that he was growing out of his cute puppy phase and into something a lot more handsome than that. For some reason, the flames were doing him a lot of favors, but Sirius knew better than to assume it was exclusive to just this lighting.

Before he could be caught, he decided to look back to his own book and tried to find where he left off. Something about how werewolves translated their smells. That looked like it had a lot of promise, so Sirius skipped down to that heading and kept going. He made it through the first couple of sentences before he glanced back up.

“Think I found something.”

“Truly?” Remus asked, closing his Orwell and joining Sirius in shifting around their positions so he could look over it.

“It does make sense,” Sirius pointed out, eyes darting over the text, nowhere near as fast as Remus’. “Consider this, you’ve been all about physical contact, so maybe you’re trying to get your scent on me to ward off everybody else or something?”

“How romantic,” Remus replied sardonically. “I’d like to think that if I were to come on to you, I’d not be doing it because I was angry with you for going off the plan.”

“You did mention that you were mad at me because I was flirting with somebody,” Sirius pointed out. “Of course, that was after you chewed me out for going to distract Slughorn and before you called me an idiot.”

“I…” Remus sighed. “I didn’t mean that, Padfoot.”

“If you think calling me an idiot is going to hurt my feelings then I’m going to demand you take lessons from my mother. You were probably just feeling like you were stronger than me, smarter than me, and I was acting out of my place and were trying to put me back in it however you could. We all say things we don’t mean in the moment, Moony.” Sirius shrugged. “And if I was smelling good to you, you were probably picking up on the pheromones, I had been in the library all day, I was hot and irritated because I ran into Regulus and missed out on my classes that day because I lost track of time, so by time I moved my hair it was probably just highlighting to your instincts ‘hey, this friend of yours? Perfectly healthy, sexy, _painfully_ single at the moment, someone you get on well with, perfectly acceptable choice.’”

“Don’t get a big head over it, Sirius, this isn’t exactly something to flatter yourself over.”

“Look, we can figure this out as easily as getting me turned on so you can tell me if that’s what you were picking up on, right?”

Remus made a slight face. Clearly, it wasn’t a face of disgust, it was more of the one he made when he had reservations over a plan that he wasn’t sure was going to work, and that just made Sirius grin wolfishly in his own right.

“I can set something up so that we can hear James and Pete slip in, that way we won’t end up getting caught. What’s the harm in eliminating a possibility?”

Remus held a hand up, his universal sign to let him have a moment to think. Sirius fell silent obediently, because that likely was a lot to take for somebody like Remus, it wasn’t like if James was in this position.

Finally, Remus spoke. “I’m guessing that if we wait until the new moon, too much time’s going to pass for us to get a proper answer, much less the next full, are you _really_ okay with this, Sirius?”

“Would I have suggested this if I wasn’t?” Sirius said with a shrug. “It’s just some harmless fun, Remus, the worst that can happen at this point is one of us gets our rocks off and you find out this is what you were picking up on?”

“Or we can get caught and be forced to explain absolutely everything to James and Pete,” Remus reminded him. “Or you decide you don’t like it, I can’t stop, and I truly _do_ hurt you this time.”

“And given our luck that is exactly the moment that James and Pete will come to the rescue. Or somebody will come down to the Common Room and catch us. Besides, I should like to think if we can find a solution before this time next year maybe all that pent-up frustration you get can be situated before it really hits the point you’re trying to make examples out of everybody who dares to cross you.”

Remus didn’t say anything for a while again, but he did exhale through his nose. When he finally spoke, Sirius was a little surprised. “Okay, we’ll try it, but if that’s not it, I’m stopping immediately, we’re never speaking of this again, and you’re just going to drop research mode. If it _is_ …”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. If you want to make this quick, I was having a bit of a strange reaction myself when you were biting my neck.”

“That could be related as well, you’re a dog, Sirius, you probably took it as a sign to submit or be killed.”

Sirius offered a shrug, moving closer. “Remus, it’s fine. It’s not like we’re going to get too far before the others get back, so it’s not going to be a problem.”

Remus exhaled, bracing himself as if he had come to his own decision. “So how exactly does one go about seducing a man of your caliber anyway?”

“Well, that’s a good start.”

Remus rolled his eyes, clearly trying not to laugh. “You’re not helping the rumors that you’re easy, Sirius.”

“And?” Sirius egged him on, moving into his lap and tilting his head slightly, just to give Remus a hint of the neck he was so deliberate in attacking last week. “Going to try to mark me off the market?”

Remus’ hands went to his waist, trying to keep him steady, but he looked extremely flustered. In response, Sirius leaned forward, slowly, catching his earlobe with his teeth.

“Just relax Moony,” he whispered, moving to kiss at the skin underneath. “It’s not like you’re going to fuck my brains out right here, it’s just a bit of snogging until you can check things out. Full moon’s far enough out that you aren’t going to lose control and hurt me.” He smiled against his skin. “Well, unless you’re into that.”

“Do you ever shut your mouth?” Remus griped, hands moving down from his waist so he could slip them back up beneath his untucked shirt. “How am I supposed to turn you on with you talking like that?”

Sirius felt his stomach leap a little, and dismissed it very quickly as some mix of nerves and adrenaline kicking in. There was something inherently naughty about feeling hands against skin in somewhere as public as the common room, knowing that he was going to be caught at any time.

Without much warning, he shifted, grinding his hips downward (he did cop a feel earlier, Remus had zero room to make any protest) until he heard a low growl, and then felt teeth against his neck fast enough that Sirius was wondering if Remus was losing control or if he was trying to end it before he did, and yet nowhere near the right pressure to make him keen entirely. It wasn’t until he felt Remus’ tongue snake out to taste his neck that he felt his stomach flip again, following the hands on his hips as they guided his movements. He was sure his face was flushing crimson by now, one hand raking fingernails against his friend’s scalp.

He felt his body fall to the side, head going against the armrest as Remus rearranged their bodies, looking down at him with all the interest that he would pour into a novel with a newly-discovered author, and Sirius’ eyes flicked down toward his lips. Would it be weird if they kissed right now? Was that too intimate for what they were doing right now? He glanced back up at Remus’ eyes, biting his lower lip briefly to try to egg him on a little further.

Remus offered him a smile, bending his head down to go for the other side of his neck and Sirius felt his breath hitch, _finally_ , and he couldn’t help but arch his back and hips, wanting nothing more than to get some of the weird tension going through his body right now.

“Yeah?” Sirius asked, voice a little low and dreamy, but he wasn’t that far gone that he couldn’t feel the smile against his skin.

“…Yeah,” he responded. “We better stop, though, James and Peter could be back at any minute. Unless you want them to see you looking like I’ve been torturing you in the best ways possible?”

Remus gently moved to let his clothed cock slide along against Sirius’ own, and Sirius almost lost his head enough to tell him to keep going. They needed to fucking discuss things before it got much more intense, he knew that, but it was hard to keep that in the foreground of his mind.

“Answer me,” Remus told him, some level of strain behind his voice that Sirius couldn’t quite place.

It felt like a long minute had passed before Sirius pushed him back and away enough for him to reach between them and tuck his openly interested prick into the waistline of his boxers. He did ask for it, he guessed, but Remus watching him shift around to get himself more presentable.

“Well, good news,” Sirius told him. “If it was last week you wouldn’t have gotten off me, so officially welcome back, Remus!”

“That bad news is that it’s definitely your pheromones encouraging me to do this,” Remus told him, grabbing his wrist to help Sirius sit up. “Just because it’s not as bad last week doesn’t mean that it’s not going to be bad again later.”

“We’ll figure out a plan for that,” he told him. “For now, at least we know it’s how I smell…and you’re not trying to turn me into another werewolf.”

“Har har har,” Remus replied, going back to his novel. “Trying or not it might just happen if you don’t keep that neck of yours protected.”

“Oh, you mean this neck?” Sirius said with a feigned innocence, dropping his head back. “This one right here that you like to latch yourself on to and make me behave?”

Remus closed his book with an audible snap, closing his eyes and exhaling through his nose. “Sirius? Daily reminder that I know where you sleep.”


	4. Moony, What Big Teeth You Have

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hey there, Little Red Riding Hood.  
> You sure are looking good.  
> You're everything that a Big Bad Wolf could want."

Somehow, he had a feeling that Peter and James must have picked up that something was going on, because it was starting to get a little harder to get time alone with Moony these days. Whether it was because Peter needed a little extra help on his homework as finals drew ever closer or if James needed his right hand man on the next big thing – which was fair, because the planned traditional end-of-the-year prank was going to be fairly elaborate and by now McGonagall was so on to their usual rampage that Sirius could practically feel her breathing down his neck. Thankfully, if you have a plausible explanation for it, Flitwick was more than happy to help you on a few extra skills, and from there, you just had to not get caught, which was essentially Team Moony-Wormtail’s _specialization_ if one could consider it.

This year, the plan was Team Padfoot-Prongs was going to distract the professors by getting “caught” animating the hair of a particularly nasty Slytherin seventh-year’s long hair to imitate snakes while Team Moony-Wormtail use this distraction to charm the Great Hall’s ceiling to imitate an electrical storm in Moony’s case (carefully timed so that it does not appear sudden, very elaborate spellwork that only Moony was capable of if they were all honest) and Wormtail slipped away to release the owls. While some may be braver than others, the theory was most of the birds would be sent into a panic by the incoming storm and be impossible to catch and less-than-likely to be shooed out.

Of course, this was all in theory, because the test runs were not giving much panic to any of their own owls except for Wormtail’s. Moony insisted that once he got this down the proper way, that won’t be too much of an issue, and if he could muster a gust of wind strong enough to blow out at least half of the candles with his was at it, that ought to do the trick. Prongs declared that this would be too much for Moony to be responsible for, as he would certainly be caught doing both charms or it would double the risk for his concentration to break among the chaos when Hyacinth Nott would no doubt make a scene over her clearly Gorgon-like origins being outed thanks to Prongs and Padfoot, seeing as she seemed to think that “Loopy Lupin” was the second easiest target in the Gryffindor brood that would dare to confront her with the knowledge of what she clearly was. Somebody else needed to get the candles blown out, and Padfoot, naturally, couldn’t be the one to do it because he chose the target of distraction in the first place (mostly because he needed to take Nott a few pegs down, did you _hear_ what she said about Reg and Snivellus at the Slug Club? Reg was naïve but he had much better taste than Snivellus), which meant Prongs and Moony were putting in overtime to get their timing down.

Honestly? Sirius kind of missed having that undivided attention on him, partially because he was just liable to crave attention whenever he could get it, partially because they needed to think about what exactly they were going to do about the furry little problem’s changing hormones. It was kind of a relief to see Remus head to bed early one night, and Sirius ducked out of his bed to poke his head through the curtains.

“Knock knock,” Sirius told him, seeing Remus’ flavor of the week had him moving on to something called _Slaughterhouse 5_ or some such slasher film-like title and it was already halfway through. “Want some reading company?”

Remus scooted over wordlessly, and Sirius disappeared into the swaths of fabric.

“You gonna be okay next month?”

“I should be able to manage,” Remus told him. “Once I get back to the house, I should be able to focus a little better. Will you be alright for the summer?”

“Once I can get Reg to commit to trying some sort of activity that anybody could be good at without needing the connections, I think that’ll make the summer go a little faster.”

“Just don’t push him too hard for Quidditch. I don’t want you missing the train again next year because you decided to corrupt him again.”

Sirius rolled his eyes but decided to not dignify it with a response. “Have you given any thought about what we’re gonna do about…you know.”

“Only about nineteen hours and three books’ worth,” Remus half-teased, but then went almost immediately back to serious mode. “I think…we need to think it over some before we rush into anything. I know that it’s alright for you, but I’m not sure if I’m wired to think of it as…how did you put it? Harmless fun?”

“You seemed pretty wired for it a few weeks ago,” Sirius pointed out.

“Don’t think I didn’t see you thinking about kissing me, Sirius.”

Sirius raised his eyebrow as Remus trailed off, waiting for him to find the words again. So what if he thought about kissing him, he was pretty sure that was just the natural progression of what they had been up to, wouldn’t it be weird for it did _not_ cross his mind in the moment?

After what felt like an eternity, Remus close his eyes and exhaled, slowly. “I know you think you can keep things separate, Sirius, I have no doubt in my mind that you have different…you know, compartments for that sort of thing, I’ve seen you flirt your way out of situations and then pay no attention to them after you’ve gotten what you wanted out of it. What I haven’t seen is you look at anybody like that before.”

“Well, I don’t exactly get myself manhandled by my friends often,” Sirius assured him, elbowing Remus in the ribs gently. “But you’re not getting to the point very fast, can I get the short version?”

“It just feels a lot like I’m taking advantage of you is all. I know you said you’re okay with all that, but would you really have been okay with it if I didn’t stop when you didn’t say anything?” He sighed softly. “Sirius. I know you think you’re capable of anything that you put your mind to, but…you _do_ realize that you can’t tame it, right? If this keeps up, you _will_ get hurt one way or another.”

Sirius hated that look in his eyes. He used to compare it to a kicked puppy back when they were in first year, but as he was getting older, it was hard to compare it to anything of the sort. The worst part of it was that he had no idea how to reassure his friend. Once Moony had made his mind up that something was the way it was, there was no convincing him that he’s come to the wrong conclusion.

“You know when you’re like that,” Remus told him, “I could kill you and I’m not even sure if you’d mind it, that was the look that you were giving me and I feel like a complete git for not realizing this last month.”

“You could, but I know you wouldn’t,” Sirius replied. “I think that’s the point. For me, at least. You’re not taking advantage of anything if I’m willing to give it, you know that.”

“That not the point,” Remus told him. “If I’m going to be driven crazy by just how you smell under certain circumstances, it’s going to be a matter of time before I just stop listening to you entirely, and that’s if I don’t kill or turn you in the first place.”

“Yeah, but you know, the more you try to repress those things the more likely you are to snap and act on the worst of them, right? You’re fifteen, Moony, this can’t be a healthy mindset for even somebody without the added complications.”

“I know,” Remus told him. “It’s just…really complicated and the more I think about it, the worse I feel about it.”

Sirius leaned against his shoulder, trying to offer him so sort of reassuring body contact while he tried to think of a solution. If he was honest, he was wracking his brain for an answer, because he just knew if he left Remus alone with his thoughts all summer, it was only going to make everything so much worse later.

Of course this was going to be complicated. Nothing in life ever wasn’t. There were a million and one factors that they had to consider, and this was just one of the very few surface level problems – Remus didn’t even have to dig deep for it. Sirius could offhand pop off quite a few of his own, such as blurring the lines of their friendship, trying to figure out if this was just a physical attraction, how and if they told the other Marauders, the matter of what exactly it meant to even let a werewolf go as far as Remus already has…and honestly, that was way too much thinking about the future for Sirius’ taste. The future was far more Moony’s territory than it ever would be Padfoot’s, and part of him was wondering if there was a part of Remus that was thinking the same thing and just was too polite to say anything.

“I just made a mess out of everything, didn’t I?” Remus said, almost to himself, closing his book again to lean the side of his face into Sirius’ hair, making an active effort to keep his nose away from the black waves. “I’m sorry, Sirius, I truly am.”

“I certainly didn’t help though,” Sirius reminded him. “I guess I’m lucky you have a lot more foresight than I do.”

“So I guess I have to know where you stand before I can get fully on board with this. I mean, where do you really stand, Sirius? Don’t just shrug it off like you have been, I need you to really think about it and tell me what you’re thinking.”

Sirius sighed, moving to lay down and look at the ceiling and not saying a word. He guessed he did owe Remus a real answer, and thankfully, Remus let him have the space to do his thinking, opening his book up and placing it on his lap and leaving Sirius to it.

None of this was Remus’ fault, despite what the werewolf seemed to think. He couldn’t help if he was going through changes that there just wasn’t a lot of material on to help him make a lick of sense of. Sirius was never going to hold that against him, as far as he could tell, the realization that the wolf inside him was starting to look for somebody to get its urges out and had his eyes set on what was the most viable candidate was clearly far more distressing to Remus than it has been to him.

When it had been clear to his parents that Sirius wasn’t seeming to hold more than passing interest with girls his age, his father had in a moment of uncharacteristic fatherhood sat Sirius down to explain to him that as long as he was discreet about it and remembered to get married to a proper witch and continue the Black name in a timely fashion, no harm could be done, so while he was underage he, at least, wouldn’t hold it against him if he was out having fun in his youth. Obviously, there was likely stipulations (though it did explain why Andromeda didn’t get herself burned off until she married the man) and he wasn’t sure if Remus even made the list of “appropriate for even a booty call,” but he wasn’t even sure if Lyall and Hope could even begin trying to figure out how to talk to Remus about this whole thing. It was a whole different quidditch pitch when your son wasn’t even the same specie as you are, after all.

Then there was the matter of what this was going to do to their friendship if Remus turned out to know the wolf better than he did. It was a ridiculous thought, at least in the mind of a fifteen-year-old, as any adult would tell you that teenaged boys invariably thought they were invincible creatures, because Sirius was well aware that he was in a far better position to hurt Remus than the other way around. A betrayal of a friend would be so much worse for Moony than it would be to him, if he was honest.

This wasn’t some sweet little thing with no world experience being lured in by the Big Bad Wolf, drawn in by his big eyes and soft words until she was close enough to be eaten. Remus could have the biggest, brownest eyes in the world and whisper everything right to him and Sirius would never once fear the teeth sinking into his flesh now that he knew that they were coming.

“I think,” Sirius said slowly. “We could play it by ear?”

“Sirius, I said think about it.”

“I am. This is gonna dead-end before we even start, and you’re not actually listening to me when I tell you that I don’t care about that, and I need you to hear me when I say it. I’m not looking to tame anything, I just want you to not feel like you’re going mad every spring or if you’re particularly stressed out about things around the full moon, you already know that this is a problem and I know you, next year are the OWLs, you’re going to be in a permanent state of stressed out. I _know_ that’s part of the problem, you’re going to be worried that since the OWLs are so damned close to the beginning of springtime that you’re going to snap and do whatever it is to me that the wolf wants you to if I even give you a chance at it.”

Remus’ silence might as well be an admission of guilt as far as Sirius was concerned.

“Remus, I know you’re probably looking for something a lot more serious than I can give you, but at least let me do this for you until you can find something more serious. This way you aren’t going to have to worry about hurting somebody that you’ll regret.”

Remus kept his silence, and Sirius just sighed softly.

“Look, you asked where I stand; I just laid it out.”

“Have you considered for once in your life that you getting hurt would be a million times worse to somebody than a stranger getting hurt? You’ll call Snape ‘Snivellus’ and send bludgers in the direction of any Slytherin you can aim at all day, but the minute I get called ‘Loopy Lupin’ or somebody partners up with your brother and makes him do all the work you’re up in arms.”

“That’s _different_ ,” Sirius pointed out. “You’re perfectly sane and don’t bother anybody as far as they know, and Regulus is mental in a way that people targeting him like that will make it a hundred times worse.”

“Maybe I feel the same way,” Remus pointed out. “Maybe it bothers me when I’m in the library and I hear some girl lie and say you’ve done far more to her just so she can rub it in somebody’s face when I know for a fact you’ve never done such a thing and maybe the idea of putting you in any situation you lose a place you feel safer than you do at home makes me feel sick because you don’t _have_ many places like that, Sirius. I know you want to help me, but you’re my friend too, and if you realize this isn’t going to go anywhere then how is it fair to you?”

“I think it somehow escaped your attention, but life isn’t fair, Moony,” Sirius made a vague gesture around the room without getting up. “None of us think so, and if you think that changes how I’m feeling or how you’re feeling, then you need to step back and use your head.”

Remus sighed softly, his shoulders drooping forward from where Sirius was staring a hole into his back. “I don’t know how to put it any other way, Sirius, I’m not looking to make a victim out of you any more than you already are.”

“Don’t start this again, Remus,” Sirius fired back. “How things are at home may not line up with how you were raised but it’s perfectly normal for a house to have some level of discipline if you don’t fall in line.”

The door to the dorm opened loudly. “MY LADS IT IS TIME!” The curtains pulled back with a jerk and James’ lopsided grin was plastered wide on his face before he took in the scene that was Sirius sprawled out on the mattress, looking more than a little irritated and Remus sitting up, a book that he wasn’t even paying attention to in his lap. He looked from one Marauder to the other and sighed before sitting cross-legged, facing Remus and Sirius at the foot of the bed. “Okay, what’s going on here?”

“James can you give us a minute? We’ll be right down,” Sirius told him.

“We’re just having a discussion, it’s nothing serious,” Remus assured.

“Padfoot just real-named me and you look like you’re about to explode,” James countered. “It sounds serious to me and if something is going on –”

“Nothing is going on!” Remus and Sirius both cut him off.

“Just hold off for three minutes and we’ll be down,” Sirius told him, finally sitting up.

“…Three minutes. Any later and Pete’s going to release the owls too early.”

“Got it,” the two replied, waiting until James’ footsteps disappeared before looking at each other.

“…Trust me,” Sirius told him, leaning his head down to rest on the taller boy’s shoulder. “Just…trust me, you aren’t going to hurt me.”

“You don’t know that,” Remus told him, leaning his head back against his own, back to how they had started.

Sirius couldn’t help but remember not that long ago, how he had told Remus no in the one moment that he truly thought he might die by his friend’s hands, and his eyes flickered toward the headboard of his own bed, where chunk of the wood had been scarred by Remus taking control back from the wolf, biting his pillow and gripping far too hard between the board and the poster until he won out. Sirius hadn’t repaired it yet; he found himself a few times a night reaching out to feel the grooves that Remus had left behind, a reminder of Moony’s immeasurable willpower. As if some sort of mirror to that comforting thought was appearing, Sirius slipped his hand against Remus’, then tilted his head to the opposite side, making a length of his neck accessible.

“Yes, I do.”

Remus turned his head, somewhere between a protest and interest in what Sirius was trying to prove, but he finally felt Remus’ fingers curl around his and felt Remus’ head shift to capture a small expanse of skin in his teeth, but it was gone as fast as it began.

“We’ll talk about it more over the summer, okay?” Remus promised him. “We’ll figure it out. We’re Marauders, it’s what we do, after all.”

“Yeah. Come on, best not to keep James waiting too long.”


	5. Of Playful Plots and Pervy Prefects

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Over the summer, the separation helps clear their heads and helps Team Moony-Padfoot make their plans for the next year, but Sirius gets his attention diverted by some rather delightful news at the end of July.

_Hello, Padfoot,_

_Here’s hoping that you get my letter before you head off to Prongs for the summer. I’m not really comfortable with him figuring out what is going on yet, even if I’m not sure I like the idea of sneaking around behind his and Wormtail’s backs, either. I don’t suppose you might have a plan to let them know once we figure out what we’ll be doing about this problem?_

_Now that I’m home, I should be able to get my head on straight so we can come to a proper solution. To be honest, I’m rather embarrassed by the whole thing. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m certain you’re correct about what’s going to happen if I opt to just ignore it come next spring. Perhaps I’m overthinking the whole thing, but I can’t help but worry about how this is going to affect you if this goes forward. I’m sorry if I am coming off wishy-washy about it, but I need to know that you’re going to be okay. I’m thinking if we set up some ground rules before I see you next, it will help me feel more confident that you will be safer._

_Do let me know if you get time over your summer. I miss you guys already._

_MM,  
Moony_

_P.S. I think my dad is starting to believe that I’m loopy, too. I keep bursting into laughter every time I look at our Greek mythology books on the shelf thinking about Notts. Absolutely brilliant, mate._

_Moony,_

_Normally, I would already be over at his for the summer, but it would appear that my hand at the end of the term has led the lady of the house to believe that I am “out of control” and “searing an irreparable mark on the name of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.” Allegedly, this means that I am a prisoner for the summer, at her beck and call until she is sure that I am to behave. It’s almost worth it though, because I have gotten some invaluable information that I will not be divulging over letters for the sake of security. Let me assure you, Moony, that you personally will enjoy this new information about my more suitable little brother._

_Regarding the rules that you would like to be set up for my safety, I will once again assure you that I am perfectly okay with anything that you can come up with, as I trust in your ability to come up with the best and most entertaining plans. I will do my best to break them accordingly._

_I have to say, though, that I told you that would be the case. It’s probably for the best that we didn’t do anything that we might have regretted because until we have a better take on things, we have no idea if the summer separation was going to just make the wolf more agitated – I hear this is a thing._

_On the bright side, it does seem that in the study we have a good amount of books on dark magical creatures, and you already know that there is going to be much more useful information in them than I could find in the school library, especially if it’s in the old hag’s section. Had I sodded off to Prongs’ immediately, I might have overlooked this beautiful bit of insight._

_Just hold tight, Moony. I can’t wait to see you blokes when my sentence is finished. My only regret is that it was not a permanent transformation._

_Mischief Managed,  
Sirius Black_

_Padfoot,_

_What is with the purple prose in this letter? Did the high gothic atmosphere steep into your brain with overexposure to Victorian wallpapers or are you trying to shake off your mother reading your outgoing letters again? That truly isn’t normal for somebody to be reading your mail at fifteen without your permission, no matter what you seem to think. I do worry about you being there by yourself, you know that, but I figure that if you wanted us to do something to help you, we would have already gotten the information without prying._

_Please fight your instinct to break any rule set up for you when this whole affair begins. I meant it when I told you that I am not sure if I can keep enough control and would be gutted if something horrible happened to you because I was being selfish with the offer you’ve so generously put on the table._

_I talked to Dad about it, by the way. I feel like full disclosure with him, at least, would be the best policy in case something does go terribly wrong, seeing that he’s got a decade of experience behind him in what to do. He suggested that I read up on certain things as well; apparently, we are nowhere near the first to decide to push certain boundaries. I have no access to them personally, but he says that he has a few ideas where to find them if I’m patient. This is going completely over Mum’s head, however, so keep that in mind if you decide to come over at any point._

_Keep me posted if you find anything that we might find useful in your raiding of the family dark magic books. I’m sure that it will be interesting to see if you’ll run into any werewolf questions on our OWLs with how much you’ve been researching them lately._

_MM,  
Moony_

_Moony,_

_Sorry that I haven’t written in a while. That old bat that Reg so readily calls his best friend ended up telling a certain hag that I’ve been taking books out of the study and I have had to cover my tracks and feign my best behavior lest my head go join the wall of house elves._

_Is it true that werewolves can see in the dark? You could have told us about that so we could have spent a whole less time trying to keep things lit for you when we send you out to complete something! Though I do suppose that it makes sense why you never seem bothered reading by moonlight. I certainly wouldn’t mind if we played a bit of that in the future with this future arrangement, there could be something fun in you being able to see everything while I am essentially blinded. Should play perfectly well with the wolf’s prey drive, don’t you think?_

_It may be a little weird to ask, but do you think that we could do something to start this whole thing on a new moon? That’s when he’s quietest, right? You’d have complete control and if things get out of hand, you’d be able to back out whenever you need to. I don’t know, I would just feel better knowing that you’re in control for the first time instead of something else. You can completely disregard that if you want this to be just between me and him, though. On the other hand, I can’t imagine how awkward it’d be for you if you’ve got zero involvement in this._

_MM,  
Padfoot_

_Hello, Padfoot,_

_Do be careful with that, it would be a shame if we come to look for you and your head is hanging on a plaque with the house elves._

_I think that it would be best if I was involved with this whole mess. It isn’t like I have the option to not be in some form or another at any rate, and at least this way I can convince myself that you aren’t just in it to protect me from the worst part of me. As you already gathered, the new moon would be the best time if you want me to be the most present, but I’ve encountered a problem with that plan. Have you checked the lunar calendar yet? There is a full moon on 30 August that’s expected to hit its stride extremely early in the day. It’s going to be quite an inconvenience to both our plans (seeing as I’m sure he will be very excited for me to not hold him back from you) and in general, seeing as I will be in recovery during both the first day of classes and the Welcome Feast. Dumbledore and I are currently trying to work out a game plan to see if I can’t arrive a little early to make the transition a touch more convenient. Perhaps if we play our cards right, you can arrive early as well and we simply tell Prongs and Wormtail that you arrived early to keep me company?_

_I am shuddering to imagine what their ride to Hogwarts will be like if we are not there to take up the other bench in the compartment, but I personally don’t believe that it will be feasible for me to wake up early and get myself to the platform in time to catch the train while I’m in that state, even if I was able to sleep the whole ride._

_MM,  
Moony_

_P.S. I just thought I’d ask: this won’t be your “first time” would it? Be honest with me, Sirius, this isn’t exactly something I am comfortable taking on just a whim that he might have._

_Moony,_

_What a rookie move on my end; I didn’t check the lunar charts. Thanks for reminding me, I’ll try to see if I can come early as well. Do you need any special permissions and if not, what excuse should I be making to make sure that Walburga and her husband do not send my brother with me so they can have their kingdom back from their terrible invaders?_

_Don’t worry about the whole first-time issue, as far as I can tell, it doesn’t count for blokes, so there is nothing that you need to get your knickers in a twist over. I’m glad you want to be involved, you know, I wouldn’t dream of doing this for anybody else. No offense to the others, of course, but we all know that if it were Prongs that he would not be satisfied until Evans gave him a hand and you know that she’d be locked up tight in the safety of the girls’ dorms until he learned how to behave himself. Wormtail, naturally, is right out, not that I don’t think he’d have much trouble charming somebody else into his teeth should he need to._

_The point is that I do want this and am flattered that there is at least half of you that wants it, too. Take this a day at a time, Moony, we can work out the rest as we go along so long as you remain my friend if he decides that he’s through with me. With you, I’m not worried. I know I’m in good hands and despite what you seemed to have talked yourself into believing, I don’t believe you have it in you to leave a person feeling used the way the rest of us do._

_No mischief meant, just seriously,  
Sirius_

_Hello, Sirius,_

_I do kind of wish you told me this when I asked you where you stood on this matter, but I guess that just like everything with you, time has given you a better outlook on something you have caught yourself up in the moment over. This is a lot more comforting than the lines you were trying on me back in the dorm._

_New moon is on 16 August, so I don’t think that it will be a problem for us if you are wanting to head out a few weeks early to make sure that you can make sure that you finish the essays we were assigned over the summer. Conveniently, I am open to tutoring the weeks leading up to the start of term. I accept payments in pounds, galleons, and teas and chocolate. Regulus does not fall behind in his studies and it’s well known that he stayed back a few hours to work on his summer assignments._

_If you don’t mind my making a request of my own in this arrangement, I would kind of like it if you were to at least cut down on your flirting with anybody between the quarter moons this year. I know intellectually that I don’t own or possess you or anything of the sort, but somehow, I’m sure that he isn’t going to get the message when this whole thing begins, and it would put my mind at ease a little bit if I knew that he wasn’t going to pick up on any perfumes from other people and won’t feel the need to put you back into your place._

_Very sincerely,  
Remus_

_REMUS JOHN LUPIN, YOU PRAT!_

_Has your school parcel arrived yet? I need to make sure I am reading this correctly! Have you truly been assigned as our year’s prefect? I’m so excited for you, Moony! Think of all the opportunities that this is going to give us! You’re going to have to tell me what halls you are patrolling the nights you are going out so that the rest of us Marauders can come surprise you every so often._

_Well, I don’t suppose that it will be a comforting fact to Walburga that I’m getting myself involved with my house prefect, despite her general belief that they are acceptable if I can’t bag myself a Head Girl. Also getting some absolutely filthy ideas we can get up to in the Prefect Bathroom if you decide you need me to help you out. This year is really starting to look up for the Marauders!_

_Did you see the other person on the list? James is going to have an absolute conniption if you do not get him in with her over this year, you know this, right?_

_Looks like your responsibilities are really starting to stack up. Are you sure you’re going to be alright? I mean, if you won’t be coming on the train to the first prefect meeting, aren’t you going to get yourself into trouble? Or did you and Dumbles already work that one out while you were preparing for the moon?_

_James and I are heading to Diagon Alley on the 13 th if you would like to come with us. I was figuring that once we get our supplies, the two of us can just go ahead and go forward to Hogwarts. I told him already that I’ve got to get out of here before I lose my mind, I was considering using you as my excuse in the first place._

_Calling first bath (so remember to get my password)!  
Sirius_

_Hello, Padfoot._

_I’m a little nervous about this coming year, as I’m sure it comes to no shock to you. I’m going to have to beg you to behave yourself to the best of your ability, as I can’t imagine that McGonagall has assigned me this position for any reason other than to keep you lot under control. I suppose that this year we’ll just have to do our best not to get caught if we don’t want to risk losing this very interesting advantage that we’ve earned ourselves (even if the lot of you are screaming from your pictures that this is all me)._

_I think I’ve got everything we’re going to need for this upcoming year outside of the course list. I admit that this was a bit of an awkward walk, but I figured that it is probably better for us both if I did the prep work on that, and it is likely to be considered a logical expense, so I don’t expect Dad to say much of anything about it. I do kind of wish I saw your mother’s face if you made the trip, though. Not quite sure if it would be worth whatever punishment that she might come up with, but I’m sure the initial reaction would have been brilliant._

_This is your last chance to back out, Padfoot, we don’t have much time left before the new moon. While I personally don’t have any further concerns except for your general comfort, it would help me a lot if I knew for certain that you’re in the same boat with me._

_I hope you don’t think it strange of me, considering that I just gave you another opportunity to change your mind, but I truly do hope you don’t and that you will be taking responsibility for what you’ve been doing to me with all this bathroom talk, you git! You can’t do this to a man so soon after the full moon, you know!_

_MM,  
Moony_

_P.S. The password is ‘seafoam’._

_Moony,_

_What are you planning do about it, Prefect Lupin? Should I be expecting a punishment when I get there?_

_Bring it on, you ninny._

_About a hundred percent not afraid of you,  
Padfoot_


	6. Awkward Advances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was ironic that reality could sink in during one of the most surreal days Sirius Black had ever encountered, in the Shrieking Shack on a moonless night.
> 
> But just like Remus always seemed to believe, the most ironic part was that the boy who lived in the moment only realized a lot of things once time could distance him from the event.

The fifth-floor bathroom was everything that Sirius had always dreamed of it being, if he was honest. He would have just been happy with a tub that he could submerge his knees, chest, and head in all at once without minor gymnastics to not end up strangled by his hair, but this? This was even better. Part of him wondered given the rest of the décor if the gold was a recent change so that the newest Gryffindor prefect would be able to enjoy his perks properly, but in the end, he concluded that it didn’t matter as he practically swam to the center and sank into the lavender foam and matching violet bubbles that made a good portion of the tub.

The best part of it was that there was nobody that was going to get on him for daring to take a bath right now. There were teachers, of course, Sirius was pretty sure that Flitwick and McGonagall must live at the school proper by now, Dumbledore was due back in a week or so – Sirius was pretty sure that he heard the portraits says that he had taken off to go look for somebody – and the string of students that were already here or stayed over the summer tended to be quite sparse.

Of course, that was probably for the best, because it meant that he and Remus had the full run of the place, taking the last few days to try to get reacquainted with each other, try to figure out what, exactly, would be changing along with their current roles.

If only he had some music to go with all this, Sirius was pretty sure that he would never come out. Hell, he could barely care that Moaning Myrtle had been sneaking a peek every time he slipped into the bath after doing some warmups down at the Pitch to get his arm back into shape after the break. Not being able to go to the Potter house made itself known in the form of less accuracy and soreness.

Sirius went to twist his back a little bit when he caught something in his peripheral, then turned further to double check before he grinning at the sight of Remus, who was already giving him a shy smile, cloak already dropped, vest and tie laying neatly on the bench, hands working on the buttons of his shirt.

“Enjoying the view?” Sirius asked, moving to the end that was closest to his friend, arms folding against the stone edge. “There’s room for another, you know.”

“I was hoping so,” Remus replied. “It’s absolutely beautiful in here, isn’t it?”

Sirius followed his gaze toward the stained-glass mermaid, moving her hair over her shoulder and looking right back at the boys. “I think she likes what she’s seeing so far, y’know.”

“Of course she does. It probably isn’t often she sees someone like you in here.”

Sirius didn’t reply, just kept watching fingers work lower and lower. He had no idea how Remus did that, just taking a compliment and then ever so subtly finding a way to flip it so that it applied to the person who gave it to him in the first place. It was some sort of high society verbal gymnastic that Sirius knew most people did to appear much humbler than they were, but when Remus did it, he was well aware that it came from the heart because Remus _was_ humble, if that made any sense at all. Sirius had long learned to just take the compliments as they came, and he couldn’t help but enjoy his own personal strip show as well.

He really didn’t know what kind of books his Dad ended up getting him, but Remus was a lot more relaxed about this by now. He supposed it also helped that they’ve all seen the scars that were slowly getting revealed with every shift of cloth from this point on.

By time Remus had finished his show and slipped down beside him, Sirius was grinning like the siren who just won out against a particularly stubborn sailor. “Want me to wash your back?”

“I’ve got it, let me just relax for a while,” Remus told him, leaning his head back to rest against the stone. “Besides, we can’t really do it here, can we?”

“I mean, I’d have you in the changing tent if you’d let me,” Sirius half-joked. “If this is going to happen then we may as well go all out or go down like legends, don’t you think?”

“Sirius?”

“Yes?”

“Do you know what used to happen to boys like you who talked too much in Turkish bath houses?”

“Lucky for you, the answer is no, but I know a Moony threat when I hear one.” Sirius sank deeper down, disappearing under the bubbles until he was nothing but a neck, head, and wisps of long dark hair, falling into the peaceful silence.

After a long time, Remus finally sank down to match Sirius, his straight face finally cracking into a smile.

“What?” Sirius asked him, already suspicious.

“Nothing.”

“What?” he repeated.

“Just wondering if your mum would wait until after you’ve been killed to cut your hair for your plaque or if she’d do it first as a form of torture.”

Sirius sent a small wave of water toward Remus’ face, not surprised he turned his head in time to miss it, and Remus’ hands emerged to grab Sirius by the hair to force his head underwater, only to yelp and howl with laughter as long, elegant fingers found his ribs, and Sirius emerged triumphantly to throw himself on to the werewolf. In turn, Remus pushed from the edge to stand and send Sirius plummeting back with a graceless splash.

This, at least, was still the same, Sirius concluded, hooking his ankles behind Remus’ knees and sending him to fall clumsily overtop him.

By time they both came back up for air, Sirius couldn’t really resist it anymore, throwing his arms around Remus’ shoulders, but before he could make the first move, Remus had wrapped his arms around his back and caught Sirius’ lips with his own.

Well, that was out of the way, at least. Remus tasted nice, too, earthy and sweet in a way that Sirius knew meant he must have invaded Peter’s candy stash, and he guessed that Remus had been so working up the nerve when he had been soaking in silence.

It lasted for what felt like a long time, at least in the world of kisses, but neither dared move into anything more than something heated, but still closed-mouthed. Sirius pulled away when he felt like Remus would allow him, blinking away a slight haze, and Remus let out a breathless laugh and pressed his forehead to his own.

“Anything like you were thinking it would be like?” Remus asked him.

“Nah,” Sirius replied. “That one feels a lot more like you knew what you were doing than the one I was imagining.”

\---

After the house elves had made sure that dinner got to the stray students, the pair of Marauders had retreated back into their dorm, having chosen to lay on Peter’s bed as Sirius held up little beans, trying to identify from its colors and shapes and see if he could identify the flavor without risking his nose or taste buds being assaulted. Remus’ flavor of the week, however, was one even Sirius had heard of, a story about a vain man whose portrait aged for him in a bid for eternal youth, it always sounded vaguely horcrux-like to Sirius, but he knew better than to bring that theory up to somebody outside of his family and Regulus just plain didn’t like the book at all when he read it back in his first year, calling it a clear extension of the writer’s own twisted fantasies with a poor stab at dark magic even for a Muggle writer.

Sirius had left that thought there, because Regulus was so much better at the Dark Arts than Sirius could ever hope to be, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know exactly by how much when they were younger.

“Here,” Sirius told him, watching Remus open his mouth so that Sirius could pop the bean in his fingers into the werewolf’s waiting mouth. “Chocolate pudding.”

Remus chewed for a second before shaking his head. “It’s chocolate, but it’s too solid for the pudding. It’s chocolate bar.”

“Dammit, I thought I cracked the code.”

“I don’t think that they are meant to be solved like a puzzle.”

“Everything can be solved like a puzzle if you work at it enough, Moony, I thought that was kind of the point.”

Remus smiled a little, shaking his head in quiet amusement. “So why are you looking for the good ones out of the box?”

“I’m not, I’m looking for the bad ones,” Sirius told him with a grin. “Pete’s not going to know what hit him, and if I learn it there shouldn’t be any problems in the future with the other boxes, right?”

“You really are a horrid friend, aren’t you?” Remus told him. “Just learn it and throw the rest away. You can’t do that to Pete.”

“Fine,” Sirius told him, drawing the word out like a petulant child. “But certainly you can think of at least one person that you would like to give a really bad one to.”

“So you say, but that would certainly would be getting you caught,” Remus replied. “The trick would be to find one of the bad ones that your taste buds don’t get the message as a bad one and go from there so that you can hand them over while you are eating them. You like the habanero pepper ones, to my knowledge, so your best bet would be to pick out those ones and hope that your victim doesn’t have your heat tolerance.”

“You really are an evil mastermind when you want to be, Moony, do you know that?” Sirius told him, rolling on top of him.

Both of them were pretty apprehensive. It was hard to not be, if you thought about it, but how exactly did you not make the situation awkward when you planned it practically down to the hour that you were going to change the entire dynamic of not only yourselves, but the entire group of friends you built together?

Remus seemed to be thinking the same thing, searching Sirius’ face for any sign of him backing out from it. While he claimed it was the last warning in the letter, Sirius knew the truth – Remus would give him a thousand last chances if he thought that Sirius might even back out of it even once out of the thousand.

“Any thoughts about where you want to…” Sirius asked him, voice a little low. “Clock’s been ticking all day.”

“I know,” Remus said with a sigh. “I’ve got a few ideas. Where would you be most comfortable, though? Don’t think about places you’d think would be hot yet, think about where you’ll feel the best.”

Sirius sat up, shifting his weight to sit on Remus’ thighs as he thought, but there was really only one answer, wasn’t there?

“The Shack,” Sirius finally settled. “Nobody’d be willing to come around to it and you’re not expected to be there in case the others decide to drop in early too.”

“…Yeah, I think that’s probably our best bet. We better get going before we won’t have enough light to see anything, though.”

Sirius sighed and got up, stretching his back and shoulders as Remus tossed the book on to his bed and reached into his trunk. “You nervous?”

“Of course I am,” Remus told him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

\---

The trek to the Shrieking Shack was as quiet as they usually were, but Sirius was pretty sure that was more out of habit than their actual nerves getting to them. The dust had long since settled in the old room, having fallen out of use for months.

Sirius pulled his wand out of his hair and put it safely in the broken wardrobe, letting his hair fall freely around his shoulders and giving his scalp a moment of pure relief. Remus had headed directly to the bed and started to shake the dust off the covers, occupying his mind however it could be.

How exactly did you go about this kind of encounter, anyway? If Remus was nervous, he needed to be the one who wasn’t, and that was a lot easier said than done, even if this was his own half brained idea, and it was him that wanted the first time to be when Remus was at his most complete anyway. Maybe they should have done something in the bath earlier, that certainly had felt like the right moment.

While he was wracking his mind for ideas, Remus had crossed the floor and took his hands, pulling him along back toward the bed, and any sign of nerves that had been settled into his friend’s features seemed to be gone, and that was all that Sirius needed to know to get the knot out of his stomach, and by time Remus was straddled over his waist and pulling Sirius’ shirt over his head, the smile that usually found its way to Sirius’ face when he was up to no good managed to find its way once again.

They already had one kiss out of the way, and one more couldn’t hurt, so Sirius grabbed at the tie around Remus’ neck and pulled him down to make sure that Remus couldn’t be the one to initiate it this time, and as Remus’ lips parted against his, Sirius decided a third kiss would be completely harmless.

Then a fourth, then a fifth, then Remus tore away to plant the sixth on to his neck, and Sirius was lifting his hips as the fabric riding low was tugged under past them, and the teeth he was starting to become far more familiar with grazed his collarbone, and Remus was far too dressed for Sirius to be so naked, and before he could even give them permission, his hands were untying knots and pulling impatiently, and Remus couldn’t stop laughing as it merely impeded his own attempts to undress and grab at a small foiled package and small bottle that he must have slipped from his trunk on their way out from one of his pocket.

If there was some sort of tension relieved somewhere deep Sirius’ chest when Remus had finally gotten himself buried inside of him, he immediately dismissed it as the hard part getting this whole thing started was now behind them and nothing else. It wasn’t like he had much time to dwell on that fleeting feeling before Remus had begun moving and forcing Sirius’ mind to not think anything at all beyond the rhythm of their bodies rocking against each other.

It couldn’t have lasted that long, in retrospect. They were young and inexperienced, after all, doing so little more than rutting against each other, but Sirius would argue that it had been more than enough to leave his mind numb, nevertheless.

What Sirius remembered most about that moonless night had been that neither of them bothered wandering back to the castle afterward, how Remus had laid beside him with his nose buried into his neck until his hair made the first of its many attempts at Remus’ life over the years that would come. They stayed up late, not bothering with any source of light, just brainstorming what they were going to need to focus on in the upcoming years to make sure that their futures were going to go the way that they wanted them to go.

The future was not a place that Sirius ever liked dwelling on, but there was something about the way that Remus concluded he was likely to need to take and pass every OWL available just to make sure he could take whatever job that would have him that turned Sirius’ own stomach in on itself. Sirius assured him that if push came to shove, James and he were going to make sure that Remus wasn’t going to have to suffer unnecessarily.

Maybe he needed to work at the Ministry to make it happen, but how Sirius was going to end up doing it, he didn’t have the faintest clue. Plans were for Moony, Padfoot merely executed them flawlessly. Something would come to him, Sirius was sure of it, if it meant that Remus could finally have nice things.

Remus really did deserve nice things. Even if this couldn’t go in the direction either of them might want it to for any amount of reasons, Sirius was okay being one of those things in the moment.


	7. Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They knew that they couldn't keep it a secret forever, so before they dug too deep down, they decide to come clean. It would be a lot easier if their mutual best friend wasn't observant enough to catch a snitch and too romantic for his own good.
> 
> At least Sirius knew that James was the best friend people like them could ever ask for, even if he was a little blunt.

It had taken just about everything in his power to pull away from Remus when he heard the door to the dormitory slam open with a shout that was so very unmistakably their wild child of a best friend. James Potter had been about two days early and Sirius had rather been enjoying rereading _The Portrait of Dorian Gray_ from Remus’ chest and shoulder, but the sound had been more than frightening enough send Sirius pulling away about a foot from this comfortable position.

“I am back again and lads, this is OUR year!”

“To have a bloody heart attack?” Sirius shouted back. “Tonight’s the full moon, you prat!”

“Sorry,” said James, not sounding very sorry at all. “But you got a new Quidditch captain!”

Sirius blinked a few times, and Remus very simply groaned into his book, as James threw his trunk against the end of his bed and practically jumped on to Remus’ bed to go over a million ideas for new tactics to use on the pitch.

Sirius gave a sidelong glance to Remus to silently beg for help, but Remus just offered his a closed-mouthed smile and returned to his book, knowing damn well that Sirius had been getting into the portrait’s destruction and now he was going to miss it.

\---

Peter arrived not too long before sunset, letting himself into the Shrieking Shack with an annoyed grunt. “You’re not going to _believe_ how much trouble I had getting here.” The trap door shut with a clack. “There’s a lot of uprisings going on along the way here, we should probably be a little more careful when we’re out and about.”

“Tell me about it,” Sirius told him. “It’s all Reg would talk about all summer. Guess that things are getting a little harder to ignore, eh?”

James ran a hand through is hair, trying to muss it up a little more stylishly. “It’s going to be fine, lads, I can’t imagine that it’s going to actually change anything. I mean, if it were, I would think that my dad would have taken the cloak back before school started up.” He paused for a second before he looked up. “Wait, didn’t you say back in June that you had some new information about Reg that we might find interesting?”

“Well, it’s interesting to me, at least,” Sirius said. “Apparently when he hung back at the end of last year to study some, he wasn’t the only person in the library. The Pince had apparently wrote home to our parents that he was caught in the restricted section looking at something with Hawthorne.”

“That seems a bit extreme,” Remus commented, voice already sounding far away and slightly dreamy, a surefire sign, Sirius had discovered, that the transformation wasn’t that far away.

“I agree, I think it would be if they weren’t looking up information on necromancy,” Sirius replied. “So, I’m going to wager a guess that they’re off to join in the cause any day they are allowed to go.”

Peter made a slight face and James pulled a full one, but Remus caught Sirius’ gaze with a little bit of worry. Sirius just shrugged, knowing exactly what that face was saying after a few weeks of…well, reading Remus’ body as much as humanly possible. Peter seemed to miss the subtext, but James lifted his eyebrow when Sirius looked back over to him. Sirius shook his head slightly, speaking a far different language to the best friend that may as well be his brother.

“Necromancy is…” Peter said slowly before James interrupted him.

“Dark magic,” James finished for him. “Probably safe to call it _black_ magic with how dark it is. Or…Black Magic if Regulus does anything with it.”

“Thin ice, Potter,” Sirius told him. “Reg’s too soft for anything that has to do with death, I’m willing to bet that Hawthorne’s the one who came up with the idea. There hasn’t been a Black that carried that mark yet and when I take over there won’t be any at ­­-”

Sirius cut himself off when he heard whimpers from beside him, and the three took their cues as Remus howled in pain as his bones started to shift and reshape.

\---

When the morning came, Sirius made sure that James and Peter were still asleep before he went to check the naked lump under the covers in the bed that he had ended up dozing off in some time during the night. He was far from a morning person, but Remus tended to wake up with the sun on most days, and you didn’t just survive being a night owl after a fortnight with a morning dove.

Remus had been curled tightly into himself, looking like he was having trouble breathing through the pain. It wasn’t an unusual sight after a full moon, but Sirius still felt bad for him nevertheless.

“Morning,” Sirius slurred as he slipped underneath the covers as well, relaxing right in front of Remus, close enough that he knew Remus could catch his scent if he needed to.

Remus didn’t say anything, but he did see his eyes flick up. His arm reached out to grab at Sirius, and he took the hint to scoot closer, hoping that his body heat might at least offer some relief to the ache.

Sirius ignored it when Remus buried his nose back into the crook of his neck, considering that James and Peter were likely to sleep in for a little while longer. He could have sworn that he heard the werewolf mutter something against his collarbone, but he couldn’t make it out over the sound of far-too-noisy birds outside the windows.

“What was that?” Sirius asked him just as quietly, just in case migraines were among the aches and pains of the morning after.

“You’re starting to smell right,” Remus muttered again.

“…Thanks?”

“Think we can sneak back up to the dorms before they wake up?”

“You can barely move,” Sirius reminded him. “Let’s just stay here for a little while longer.”

Remus exhaled a little, shifting his head feebly to bury his face better against his neck and finally slept.

This wasn’t the first time that any Marauder had been caught in the trap that was Moony the morning after; he believed all of them by now have taken their turn as the werewolf’s pillow, but he couldn’t help but feel like this was going to be his fate for the rest of their years at Hogwarts. It wasn’t the worst thing, he decided, especially given that this is the fastest Remus had fallen asleep the morning after a full moon in ages. It wouldn’t be long before he was out enough for them to get him dressed again and could carry him back to the castle so that he could recover in peace back in their dormitory.

Sirius ran his hand through the light brown hair that tickled his cheek, just about to doze back off when he finally heard the telltale clack of hooves and antlers as the stag stirred and then rose to his feet, stretching its back along the way. By time Sirius lifted his head, James stood in the stag’s place, pulling the moth-eaten fabric out of the window in an old habit that he must have picked up sometime in their second year.

“Dammit, James,” Sirius cursed, feigning the sun waking him up. “Ten more minutes.”

“You can sleep when we get back to the dorm,” James told him.

“School’s not started, nobody’s gonna be looking for us,” Sirius pointed out.

“No, but the pitch is ours for the taking and I do want to try out a few things before we present them to the rest of the team,” James pointed out.

“The pitch is _yours_ for the taking,” Sirius groaned. “So, go take it and leave the rest of us out of it.”

James made a face at Sirius and double-checked what bits of clothing had survived the transformation. Thankfully, it looked like the only casualty had been his shirt, that Remus had desperately clawed at in the first throes of his transformation until the top few buttons had been popped up, and that was an easy fix, at least for Peter, who was probably the only boy their age that was willing to admit that he knew how to sew by both hand and by magic.

With a summoning charm, James popped the lost buttons into his pocket without even check if they had been broken; it never really mattered if they were or not.

Remus stirred some while they worked his clothes back on together, then James poked Peter awake while Sirius hoisted the last Marauder on to his back.

\---

Remus was, thankfully, used to waking back up in the dorm well into the afternoon thanks to his friends’ efforts, and even more used to doing it alone. Sirius had been smart enough to take the comment about him “smelling right” as a sign that Remus likely would feel a little less vulnerable and exposed in his bed.

More than anything, Sirius was relieved to see that when he finally could drag himself away from the pitches, looking far more beate _n_ than he did a beate _r_ , that the curtains were drawn on his bed. Doublechecking that Peter and James were busy doing an entire summer’s worth of schoolwork in two days, Sirius slipped back into his bed.

“Alright, Moony?” he asked.

Remus groaned in response, but it was not one of pure agony, and that was enough for Sirius feel a little more assured than before.

“Brought you dinner.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Then just drink something,” Sirius pressed.

“Kay,” Remus told him, moving his head to rest on Sirius’ lap the best he could. “I hate the full moon.”

“I know, mate. Do you need to head down to the hospital wing?”

“Don’t you dare.”

Sirius rolled his eyes, naturally, but he stayed as he was for a long time, not saying anything until the sun started to bathe the castle walls in Gryffindor colors again.

“I think James knows something’s going on,” Sirius told him, running his fingers through Remus’ hair. “We probably should try to tell him.

“I asked you before if you’ve got any ideas on how to tell the others,” Remus told him. “You’re the one who avoided the question in the first place.”

“Well,” Sirius said slowly with a shrug. “I’m not sure what’s really going on to begin with, mate, we probably need to figure that one out before we try to explain it to James. You know, he’s got…ideas on what things like this should probably entail, and…”

“And this isn’t exactly a fairytale ideal,” Remus said with a sigh. “I know, I know, this is…”

Remus trailed off a little, and Sirius lifted his eyebrows at him, waiting for him to finish the thought, but Remus shook his head to announce he was done.

“Y’see?” Sirius told him. “It’s so much more complicated than we can figure out and we’re the ones in it, not him. It’s not his boy-meets-girl story where we just…fall in love and I whisk you off to some castle where we live happily ever after.”

Remus shot him a weary smile, throwing his arms out wide. “Well, it’s not like we don’t have the castle involved, maybe that will be enough to convince James that this is enough.”

Sirius couldn’t help the laugh escaping his throat, even if it is no laughing matter. He always did laugh at the worst times, and there was just something so ridiculous about the thought of trying to explain that things weren’t going to be the same for a very long time, if ever.

“You’re great, Moony, you know that, right?” Sirius told him.

Remus smiled back up at him and lifted himself from his lap, leaning against the headboard for support to pull Sirius’ face to his own, and the kiss was slow and languid, no urgency or need behind it. Sirius shifted himself closer, letting Remus coax his mouth open and fine letting Remus take as much control as he needed to have.

When he finally pulled back, Sirius needed a second to breathe his own air before opening his eyes again. This part, at least, he was sure that James would understand – as much of a jerk that he could be sometimes, he doubted that James would have anything to say about his two best friends, it would just be the circumstances that would throw him for a loop.

“Kiss me like that again and I may just tell you to leave James to me,” Sirius told him, and Remus gave him a wolfish smile and captured his lips all over again.

\---

By time he got James on his own, it had been the only appropriate place to ever confront James alone: on the path from the pitch back to the castle. At first, James didn’t seem to have anything to say about any of it, and Sirius was not sure what was going through his head, mostly because when it came to more serious things, James tended to keep his hand close to his chest.

“…Well,” James said when he seemed to finally come back to Earth, “that explains the claw marks on your bed frame last year.”

“That wasn’t from…” Sirius took a breath when James turned his head to look at him. “It didn’t happen last year.”

“Come on, Sirius,” James told him. “Tell me something a little more believable at least. This didn’t come out of nowhere.”

“It actually kind of did.”

“For you, maybe,” James told him. “And even then…”

“James, don’t make this any weirder than it already is.”

“Why would it be weird?” James asked, crossing his arms. “It’s practically a classic: two childhood friends start getting older, the quiet one starts looking at the louder one a different way and starts to hate seeing them with other peo—”

“James!” Sirius cut him off. “It’s not like that. It’s really, really not.”

“If you think that it’s not like that maybe you need to look at this from our point of view,” James pointed out. “Because if this was like every other time you decided to just flirt with somebody to get an advantage, you would have _never_ gone for Moony and you know that because that is the _one_ person you would never hurt like that. And, well, me, but I wouldn’t let you, you know?”

Sirius took another deep breath and looked at the sky, trying to find some sort of guidance from a god that he very simply didn’t believe in, and cursing Remus for making him do this alone.

“Prongs, listen to me,” he tried again. “Moony…Moony’s just not wired like us.”

“I know he’s not,” James countered.

“No, I mean in cases like…this one,” Sirius concluded. “It’s attached to the seasons. You know how if he’s stressed out the wolf’s much closer to the surface and he’ll have a harder time near the full moon? It’s kind of like that, but he’s going to be stressed out for the entire springtime because that’s when the wolf is telling him that he needs to establish some territory and he –”

“Sirius?” James said, turning around to face him fully, walking backward. “You can justify this however you want in your head but I’m going to remind you that Remus is my friend, too, and I gotta hold you to the same standards I’d hold anybody he’d date and I am going to be _really_ nice in asking you to remember to watch what you’re saying because he’s not any more an animal than you or me.”

“I _know_ that, but this isn’t Remus we’re dealing with,” Sirius pointed out.

“Yes, it is,” James told him. “Do you really think it’s a coincidence that he went after you last year? Just try to think of this from his perspective, do you really think he’d have jumped on this plan to keep those instincts satisfied if it wasn’t for one little factor you seem to be bypassing? A lot?”

“Look, are you going to help us out by keeping Pete out of this or not?” Sirius barked back. “He doesn’t wanna sneak around and I didn’t think I wanted to, either, but _I_ don’t got a choice right now, so I was hoping that you’d at least get it enough to help cover for us!”

“I’d be a _lot_ happier sneaking you two around if I knew that this wasn’t just you two just…you know, getting off somewhere!” James waved his hand in a dismissive fashion. “Know what, Sirius, never mind, I’ll help you guys out, but I’m going to go one record as saying that you are an idiot and when this invariably falls apart I’m on Moony’s side and I want him to have my custody in the divorce.”

“We talked about that already,” Sirius told him, falling back into stride beside him. “If this doesn’t work, we’re staying friends and co-parent friending. I wasn’t going into this blind, you know.”

“That’s debatable,” James said, shoulder-checking Sirius as soon as he fell into stride. “That’s really, really debatable, Padfoot.”


	8. Of Full Moons and Failing Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February, 1976: The Marauders were used to plans never going quite the way they expect, and are the masters of improvisation, but Sirius still found juggling studying, Quidditch, and preparing for the impending springtime with a werewolf who cared about his safety a little too much to be ridiculous.
> 
> However, with the right support system, Sirius didn't have a doubt he'd make it through just fine.

Despite the fact that this is what he signed up for, it felt like forever before Remus would dare to let the wolf at him. Not that Sirius was complaining in these early stages, because even without the wolf, Remus had more than proven to be a handful.

Sirius always assumed that Remus needed to work himself up to that point. Honestly, he was pretty sure that he would be the exact same way – a lot of things could go wrong, and Remus was always the kind to mitigate the risks as much as he possibly could. It definitely helped that James was good at what he did, and that included making any excuse that he could come up with to keep himself and Peter busy with pranks at even a subtle hint from Remus that Team Moony-Padfoot might be wanting some time alone. In retrospect, Sirius was pretty sure they must have had a talk of their own while Sirius had not been present.

By time February rolled around, though, Remus had to relent that they probably needed a test run before it took them both on by surprise, which was exactly how they ended up back in the Shrieking Shack the night before the moon was completely full.

As they had done quite a number of times before, Sirius’ wand hit the wood of the broken wardrobe and rolled into its usual place as if it had committed its spot to memory while two thunks against the floor announced that Remus had kicked his shoes off by the bed in a way that made Sirius subconsciously move a little faster. By time his robe was thrown into its place and Sirius crossed the floor, Remus had already gotten his tie loosened and had several buttons undone.

With a grin, Sirius straddled his lap and gently pushed his backward. “So how are we going to do this? You just let him out and I’ll just do whatever it takes to get through it?”

“What do you usually do when I lose control?” Remus asked him with his hands working on Sirius’ belt.

“Usually you’ll come back if I call for you a few times. You’re pretty reliable with that if it isn’t a full moon.”

“Okay, so if it gets too much for you, then make sure to do that.”

“Won’t that defeat the purpose of getting a test run done?” Sirius asked him, leaning down to kiss him before he could even get an answer out.

Remus growled, low in his throat, possibly at the annoyance that Sirius wasn’t taking this seriously, possibly at the interruption, possibly in arousal, but very likely a mix of all three, and Sirius felt his shirt being pulled up over his head without an major warning. He pulled his head back to make Remus’ efforts a little easier, but Sirius decided he was going to let him keep his own shirt. If nothing else, he did like seeing it half- open on him. There was something so much more attractive about the idea of Remus looking undone for once in his life than just…naked and vulnerable. Sirius was going to blame having seen Remus naked in far less heated situations in this very room.

His head dipped back down to catch Remus’ lips again anyway, open-mouthed and needier than Sirius would ever admit that he would be and egged on by a pair of hands over his back, the same hands that were twisting their bodies until Sirius hit the mattress, the same hands that were guiding his own to rest over his head and pinning them in place. Like a good boy, Sirius kept them where he was told and let Remus take control. So far, there didn’t feel like anything that different from their encounters before and this one.

Kisses slowly turned into bites, however, lips turning into teeth, and Sirius felt his body arch the second that Remus’ teeth found his neck. It took a lot of effort to not uncross his wrists from over his head and just touch him, especially when he felt Remus pull back to slip trousers down his legs. Well, there was no rules about his legs wrapping around his waist to try to pull the wolf back in, so that is exactly what Sirius did, enjoying the look of confusion crossing Remus’ face until he just chose to sink his teeth into Sirius’ pale neck. Just as every time beforehand, Sirius stilled, electricity shooting the not- _quite_ -pain down his back and right between his legs. If it weren’t for a pair of hands going straight to his hips, Sirius probably would have tried to arch up and get the relief of contact.

Instead, he just flexed his fingers and try not to think of the fact that he was naked underneath a side of Remus that wasn’t Remus at all, not really.

He let go of his neck for now, hands running up his sides until his thumbs flicked at his nipples. Sirius still had the scars from the last time he and the wolf had been left alone together, one of which was going over one of them, and somehow he was sure that the monster in his friend’s skin was well aware of where that line had come from.

This didn’t quite feel as bad as last time, of course, and Sirius wasn’t sure if that was caused by the fact they were literally in his territory now or if he could smell Remus all over him, but he wasn’t being strangled yet, and that was a plus in his book.

“Just gonna stay there and check me out or are you going to do something about somebody in your shack?” Sirius teased him.

Remus glared down at him in response, and he couldn’t help the cocky smile crossing his lips. He knew that this was probably playing with fire, but Remus should already know by now that Sirius was fully expecting to burn himself somewhere in this little arrangement of theirs.

“C’mon, I know they say you can’t even recognize your best friend when the wolf comes to the surface, but certainly you can recognize one of your playthings, right?”

“You’re not a plaything,” Remus countered, and Sirius head fell back with a groan of frustration.

“You said you’re going to let him have complete control tonight.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Sirius, I do feel him lurking in the back of my mind, but…” He shook his head. “I’m not going to just let him tear you apart or anything like that.”

“ _Remus_.”

“Don’t ‘Remus’ me, you’re the one with a death wish here if you were thinking of trying to dirty talk him when I have no control to stop it. And, let me stress this a little bit more, you are _not_ anybody’s toy, much less mine, you’re a whole damned person, Sirius.”

Sirius went to argue that as much as Remus might feel that way, there was no guarantee that the rest of him might agree to that, but Remus leaned the rest of his body down to kiss him again and moved his hips in just the way that he knew would cut off just about anything that Sirius might have had to say.

“While you’re down there,” Remus teased when he pulled away, “I don’t see anything wrong with taking advantage of the opportunity to try something a little new.”

Sirius turned his head to give him a suspicious look. “And what exactly are you thinking for something new?”

“Open your mouth and close your eyes,” Remus told him, shifting away for a minute.

“I still don’t give head,” Sirius told him, but obeyed without a second thought.

“I would like to try that sometime, but that isn’t what I was thinking.”

Before Sirius could ask what it was that he WAS thinking, he felt fabric against his tongue, and his eyes shot open in slight distrust. Remus was still looking as calm and collected as ever whenever he decided that he was going to take control over any situation, though, and Sirius decided to let it happen.

Just to make sure that his tie wasn’t pushed out by his tongue, Remus looped his own off of his neck and readjusted the knot so that it sat neatly at the base of Sirius’ skull, the fabric looped around so that it almost cut the corners of Sirius’ mouth. When he was done, he playfully ruffled Sirius’ hair and kissed his forehead.

“Hopefully now you won’t be able to say anything you’ll regret if I _do_ lose control.”

Sirius shook his head with a roll of his eyes, but the fabric shifted upwards to betray the smile that was otherwise completely restrained, but his bratty response was cut short by a muffled groan the second he felt his legs get forced apart and slickened fingers hit their target in the first stroke.

\---

“You look completely blissed out, mate,” James teased Sirius the minute he got through the door for the shack and noticed that Sirius hadn’t even bothered getting his clothes back on.

Sirius did have enough strength to throw up his hand in a rude gesture, and Remus couldn’t help but laugh from where he had curled up around Sirius. “What time is it, James?”

“Nine in the morning, you both missed breakfast and missed practice,” James told them, tossing Remus’ robes over Sirius’ head. “Not so much a problem for you, Remus, aside from the fact Evans is looking for you, something about a prefect meeting this afternoon, but Sirius, you forgot to let anybody know that this is a thing that’s going to affect you too.”

“I might have been a little hard on him,” Remus teased. “Can you tell McGonagall that he’s not feeling well either?”

“You know she’s not going to believe us that Sirius is sick, it’s usually closer to the summer when he gets a bug.”

“I’m right here you know,” Sirius muttered from under the robes, not bothering to try to fish himself out quite yet. Moony might have had a good hold on the wolf last night, but he definitely lasted much longer and needed a lot more attention to get himself off, and Sirius was paying the price this morning.

“Sorry, Padfoot,” Remus told him, but something in his tone told Sirius he wasn’t very sorry at all.

“You _are_ looking like you’re feeling better though, Moony.”

“I think it’s because I woke up here more than anything,” Remus replied with a yawn. “I do tend to feel better when I do.”

“He probably thinks of this like his territory or den or something,” Sirius muttered, reaching his hand out of the robes. “Hair stuff.”

“I didn’t know which lotions and potions to bring,” James told him. “But I did find your hair tie in your locker.”

Sirius finally moved out of the robes, gathering his hair back and smoothing it out as best he could with his fingers. “Slytherin is next weekend, right?”

“Ravenclaw,” James pointed out. “Slytherin’s in March proper, but since we’re dealing with Ravenclaw I _need_ you on your best game next week, which means after tonight you’re going to have to make up practices. Moony, do you mind?”

“I don’t think so,” Remus replied. “I have to catch up on my studying anyway. You three ARE remembering to study, right? I’m not going to be able to correct your scrolls at the end of the written exams.”

“McGonagall’s going to be meeting up with us soon to help us figure out which tests to prioritize,” James said with a shrug. “I’m sure that she isn’t going to put it off, so I’ll buckle down when we get notice. Pete’s already working on some study guide or another to try to get a head start. Pads, what about you?”

“I’ll just wing it,” Sirius said, finishing the last loop in his hair tie and using his hair to pull it as close to his scalp as possible. “I’m not worried about it, if there’s a war around the corner, don’t we have bigger problems than what job we’re going to work in a future we know nothing about?”

Remus gave him a look before sighing and rolling his eyes and getting out of bed, still half-dressed. “I’m going to go help Pete while we’re all still ourselves. Sirius? Please do something akin to studying, okay?”

“Sure thing,” Sirius lied through his teeth, focusing on getting himself dressed until he heard Remus leave entirely. Then, he glanced over at James. “Practice is like studying.”

James grinned and reached into his own robes to toss Sirius his greaves. “Way ahead of you, let’s get going.”

\---

Nobody really thought anything about James and Sirius spending a weekend in their Quidditch robes. It was a pretty common sight in the common room ever since James became captain, and even more of a common sight was not seeing the pair at all on a weekend. Sirius was going to take full advantage of that, too, sending Lily off on wild goose chases to let Remus have a few hours of reprieve from his prefect duties while James and he got prepped for next week.

Unfortunately for everybody involved, the new Ravenclaw captain was a lot less naïve than her predecessor and had made sure to burn their playbook and make the team commit everything to memory. It was driving James insane trying to figure out what their next moves were going to be, and Sirius and James took the invisibility cloak to the pitch every time they caught wind that they had the pitch for the afternoon, trying to bring back everything that they possibly could.

James, at least, was extremely interested in what they were trying to do with their Seeker, who was spending a lot of time doing his drills way past the usual height bounds, and it wasn’t until they were on their way back before James seemed to realize Ravenclaw’s Quidditch gear was blue and white; he was taking advantage of the sky for proper camouflage, and Wednesday’s practice James had taken the practice bludger and forced their own Seeker to tail it for the entirety of the practice, his usual tactics going out the window in favor of not losing sight of the opponents’ seeker.

By time Friday came, Sirius was confident that they were going to give the birds a run for their money. The issue had been that he caught sight of something that he shouldn’t have seen.

Regulus was standing in the Ravenclaw bleachers, arms crossed and eyes moving like he was transfixed on the moves of the chasers, but when his known partner in crime, a Ravenclaw girl that Sirius knew was in his year called Melanie, threw her arms around him when they took possession of the Quaffle, Regulus uncrossed his arms to hug her back, letting himself be used for Melanie’s balance as she jumped and cheered. Sirius took his eyes away, wondering exactly what was going on there, given that Regulus showed zero interest in Quidditch or even being in a crowd to begin with, but he already lost sign of the bludger, which had gotten behind him and went straight for his broom, somewhere between his hips and hands, and before he really knew what was happening, James had a hold on his arm and was signaling to Hooch for a time out as they made their way to the grass.

“What the hell, Sirius?!” James hushed-shouted as he checked to make sure that Sirius hadn’t gotten hurt.

Sirius waved the knob that was once his broom in a vague manner once the blood stopped singing in his ear. “I lost track of it, why is Reg here watching your every move?”

“Don’t worry about the audience, he’s probably just here to pick something up for Crouch!” James chastised. “Just focus on getting through this match and we can worry about Reg later!”

Sirius glanced back up toward the Ravenclaw bleachers, and he was sure that he felt Regulus staring back at him, even if he couldn’t see it from this low. Madam Hooch handed him a new broom after she took a turn looking Sirius over and cleared him, and Sirius was back in the sky with a victorious roar of cheers from the Gryffindor stands.

He swept past the stands, catching another face that didn’t usually make it to the matches, smiling and shaking his head at the dramatics of the past few moments, but Sirius knew that Remus was mostly just relieved that he was alright. Sirius gave him a wink in response, then his eye was back on the bludger that he had already decided that he was going to beat into next week, and Regulus’ presence at the game faded into the back of his mind, drowned out by the thrill of a good chase.


End file.
